Marchwarden: Hidden Hero
by kenazfiction
Summary: A continuation of Haldir's story which began in Marchwarden: Son of Guilin.
1. Chapter 1

**Lothlorien, Third Age 1982**

The devastated forest mourned for its children, those who perished as well as those who departed its sheltering boughs in their grief. The trees' lamentations were displayed in the shedding of their leaves and the sagging of their mighty limbs. The flowers in the gardens faded and withered and the song of wind in branches became a hollow whisper even the elves strained to hear.

But Dol Guldur had not prevailed, no matter how Lorien suffered; they were bloody and diminished, but they were not vanquished. As one season ends, so another begins, and as one chapter of Lothlorien's history came to a bitter close, another was waiting to be written, and it began with the return of two who loved Lothlorien deeply, but who had been long away. They came at long last to the forest, and with them came hope.

As the Lady Galadriel and her mate, Celeborn of Doriath, entered the Golden Wood, the trees gave bud anew, and all that lay fallow flourished. _The love the trees bear for the Lady is so great_, the Galadhrim believed, _that they long to appear to her full fruit!_

Those who gathered in Galadriel's Garden in the shadow of Caras Galadhon raised their voices together to welcome their new stewards:

"Hail to the Lord and Lady of Lothlorien! Hail to the Golden Wood!" 

* * *

With silent steps Haldir traversed trails only his eyes could find, wending his way through mellyrn, birch and ash.

He recalled a bright morning long, long ago when his father had swept him up onto his shoulders and carried him through these woods in dappled sunlight. He remembered his father kneeling behind him, one arm wrapped around his waist, his hand broad and warm against his belly, pressing his little palm against the bole of a mallorn and whispering to him to listen.

_The trees will speak to you, iôn-nin, if only you have ears to hear them. They love us as we love them. They shelter us with leaf and bough, they give us wood for our very beds and kindling for our hearth-fires, and in return, we tend them. Will you hearken to them, pen-neth? Will you keep them as they keep you?_

Ever in Haldir's mind his father had stood as a soldier, a mighty force with bow and sword, slayer of yrch and fell beasts, defender of the realm. He understood now that his father's duty had been far greater than that; the sword and bow had been but a small facet of the whole. He was a Galadhel, an elf of the trees, and it was to their stewardship even more than the protection of his people that he was willingly bound.

In his memory, he recalled Guilin's hand rippling and shifting, blending with the bark as if becoming part of the fibre of the tree itself. He could no longer see where silver skin of the tree ended and Elven flesh began. The hand around his belly edged upward, coming to rest over his heart.

_Open yourself to them, iôn-nin. Let them speak to you. Let them speak through you._

For the first time, his hands had felt the pulse of life behind the silent sentinels, the power thrumming in root and leaf. Under his touch, the mighty mallorn breathed and sighed. He had heard with new acuity the steady beating within the bole as if it emanated from his own heart.

_Suilad, Guilinion._

He had tried to respond, but overwhelmed, his voice had failed him and he only stared at the tree in mute awe. And the tree had laughed, a warm, inviting sound like wind-blown leaves. His father's arm around him was as solid and strong as a root; he could imagine the shape and shade of the Mallorn being absorbed into his father's body until it was the tree itself that embraced him. His father was part of the woods. He had understood then: he himself was part of them, too.

And now, no longer a babe yet still a child of the woods, Haldir leaned against that same Mallorn, rested his cheek against the smooth bark and closed his eyes.

"_Suilad, pen iaur_."

_Suilad, Guilinion. There are no more redcloaks here. Have you come to take their place? To take your father's place? _

"Aye. I am to take their place. Will you have me for your guardian?"

_We will_, came the answer. _We have been waiting for you._


	2. Chapter 2

Still, in dreams, he heard the cry to cut the ropes, saw his hands move to his dagger, and each night, again and again, he watched the Marchwarden fall.

_The time for mourning is over._

He could even now hear the warm shadow of that voice in his mind; the words once spoken by Elemmakil to comfort him at loss of his father Haldir now heard as ghostly admonishment for his rigid sorrow and trenchant guilt.

Despite that chiding echo, he did mourn: for the dutiful friend, for the great soldier and for the lover of yore. That he had made his peace with Elemmakil and regained the cherished companion and advisor of old was some comfort, and he shuddered to contemplate the raucous misery he might now be enduring had he ungraciously maintained their alienation. Their last years serving side by side had offered closure to their tempestuous relations and had allowed Haldir once again to absorb the wisdom of a brilliant tactician, the skill of a master swordsman, and the brotherhood of a kindred soul.

And yet, regardless of all of Elemmakil's guidance, he wondered still if he were prepared for the task that lay before him.

Haldir's world had changed swiftly and irrevocably: a Balrog of Morgoth had brought Khazad-dûm low, and the Golden Wood had come under siege on every front. Elemmakil had fallen, his death delivered by Haldir's own hand even if the order had come from Elemmakil himself and without any other recourse; Tathalion had resigned his post, and the King had abandoned his realm and his people. A son of Doriath and a daughter of Valinor stood now in his stead. The changes of an entire age had come to pass in one year's time, and along with them, Haldir considered as he checked and rechecked the buckles of his pauldrons and the alignment of his vambraces, the inexorable approach of what felt very much like destiny.

Orophin paused in the doorway and watched Haldir tug a comb roughly through his hair, saw the unsettled look weighing down his brother's features. He stepped between Haldir and the mirror, forcing an end to those nervous occupations and gestured to a nearby chair.

"Sit."

He took the comb and picked carefully through silvery locks still damp from the bath. Haldir gave himself over to his brother's ministrations, and with adroit fingers, Orophin wove the warrior plaits in Haldir's hair. Never before had he braided Haldir's hair; in their youth, it was always Rumil's locks he managed, the youngest brother having neither interest nor inclination to do much more than pull it out of his eyes in a thick tail. Now if he appeared with a more decorative arrangement, it bore the hallmarks of Feredir's neat hand.

"I remember watching Naneth do this for Ada. I believed she must have used some sort of enchantment to make her fingers dance so quickly through his hair, so perfectly she worked it."

Orophin smiled mildly remembering his early attempts to mimic her, how she would open her hands to show him how she held the strands, how to cross them over and pick them up again, but his braids had come out crooked and misshapen. Under his mother's hands, his father would close his eyes, a look of serene contentment softening his chiseled face. Watching their ritual, he saw how much his father loved his mother's touch, even in that simple way.

Looking up from his work, Orophin saw Haldir's face in the mirror and was taken aback by the distress painted there. Their eyes met in the glass.

"Does he see us, do you think? Does he know?"

There was no need to ask who; his memory was ever-present here, the tread of his footsteps held in the very grain of the floorboards, his handiwork evident in every room, his strong features greeting them even now in the mirror. Orophin squeezed Haldir's shoulder and smiled.

"He knows, and he is proud."

Rúmil's footsteps echoed on the landing, and a moment later, the archer ducked into Haldir's chamber. He looked Haldir up and down and a smile blossomed across his face.

"You cut a fine figure, _muindor_…like Menelmacar come down from the firmament! Oh, and your nephew bade you accept this." He handed Haldir a beautifully etched bottle—a rare prize in itself, but when filled with the choicest wine of a master vintner, 'twas a kingly gift, indeed.

"And now I have come to fetch you," the youngest declared. "The procession is ready to begin."

If Haldir blanched slightly, his brothers conspired not to notice. Rúmil bounded back down the stairs and Haldir would have followed if Orophin had not waylaid him a moment more.

"Might I wear your sword tonight, _muindor_? You will receive another this eve, and you would do me an honor to let me carry yours."

Haldir's eyes glittered brightly at the request. As they stepped out of the _talan_, Orophin spoke softly in his ear.  
"I, too, am proud." 

* * *

The song of a drum, a proud rhythm of an ancient heartbeat, preceded a sadly foreshortened line of Galadhrim warriors. At their head, Haldir walked alone. He held his breath as he ascended the massive spiraling staircase of Caras Galadhon in regulated steps, the look of restrained pride on his face masking the discordance of grief, guilt and uncertainty within.

Lanterns cast the stairs in a hazy blue glow and Haldir's armor fairly glittered even in the low light. Strange it was to don armor but to keep an empty sheath, to be girded in plate yet wear neither cape nor helm. Despite the defense of metal, mail and leather, he felt uncomfortably exposed. How long had he known he was fated for this office? It seemed as if he had held that knowledge since his very begetting. His father's blood ran in his veins, even now singing to him of honor and duty. Elemmakil's voice echoed in the dark cavern of his heart, his song much the same. Yet now that the moment was upon him, his conviction faltered.

The hall radiated an ethereal aura, but from whence it came he could not discern. Celeborn stood flanked by his sentinels and Galadriel stood silently behind them. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied his brothers beaming at him, their backs straight and tall and their eyes bright with shared joy.

A soldier rather than a king, Celeborn eschewed the pageantry of Amdir and Amroth for austere martial ritual. But if Celeborn's ceremony lacked pomp and grandeur, it more than compensated with solemn dignity. He spoke of Haldir's skill and courage, and of the sacrifices made by those who had gone before with such pride and reverence that the heart of every warrior lightened to hear him speak.

At Celeborn's signal the first sentinel stepped forward, presenting Celeborn with that item Haldir both dreaded and desired: the red cloak. _It is heavy, this mantle_, Haldir thought as Celeborn fastened it around his shoulders. The foliate motif of the fibula was the same design as his father's. How many mornings had he climbed upon a stool, or stretched to his toes, to fasten the Mallorn leaf at his father's shoulder, seen him lift his chin and observe his son out of the corner of his eye, a warm smile tipping up the corners of his mouth? His father had held faith in him, knew what his fate held, even then. His heart swelled in his chest with gratefulness and great love. He sank silently to one knee as much from the overwhelming feeling of awe as from the necessity of the ritual.

The second sentinel advanced bearing a long, curved sword. His father's blade made new! It was the self-same weapon Orophin had carried since Guilin had fallen on the Dagorlad; to Haldir, it was a treasure beyond reckoning, imbued with all the strength and honor of his kin. The scars of battle had been smoothed and polished till the blade seemed almost a light unto itself. He saw the tengwar engraved down the face: _Gurth a chyth-in-Lorien!_ He turned his head just enough to find Orophin and meet the vitreous gleam of his brother's gaze with his own. Lorien's lord held the sword aloft in his hands, and all eyes in the room rose to it. He brought it down in front of Haldir, who laid his hands reverently upon the blade.

"By root and by star, by the blood in my veins, in the presence of Iluvatar, I, Haldir, Son of Guilin, take this sword for Lothlorien, that I might safeguard all that lies within her borders with all that I possess, even unto the sacrifice of my immortal life. Let that life be forfeit should I ever forsake this oath."

"Haldir, son of Guilin, is your oath freely given?"

"My oath is freely given, my Lord."

He kissed the blade, and Celeborn placed the sword in his hands. He marveled at its beauty in the strange light of the hall, brandishing it once before guiding it into its scabbard. Once the tip found its home in the throat of the casing, he released his grip and listened to the appealing ring it made as it slid home.

"Rise, Haldir, Marchwarden of Lorien. See the faces of those who serve at your side."

He turned to gaze into the sea of blue cloaks, watched with a pounding heart the wake that rippled through it as each head incline and every Elf brought his hand to his heart in a gesture of respect. It was a gesture he readily returned.

"Guardians of Lorien, take heart!" Celeborn exhorted. "Let the strength and courage of your Marchwarden remind you of your own oaths in these dark times. Let the memory of those who have gone before reside in your hearts and minds. Go forth now and revel in this new beginning. From the ashes has risen the mighty Galadhrim army!"

A cheer went up from the guardians and a flute joined the drum to lead the ranks out of the hall and down to the garrison where much wine, and much-needed merriment, awaited them.

The sentinels stepped forth and ushered the last lingering observers out, leaving the Marchwarden alone in the room with his Lord and Lady. Celeborn laid a paternal hand on his back.

"You have sworn fealty, Haldir, and offered your sword to your realm. But I would have you know all of what you protect. Come."

He followed down a narrow stairway, a passage clearly intended for the Lord and Lady alone, and walked with them to a secluded glade sheltered at the foot of the enormous mallorn. Haldir had heard tales of the Lady's mirror which allowed her visions of that which might come to pass, but his mind had conjured images of some grand and ornate object, not the simple silver basin supported by slender stone caryatids. The air in the grove seemed suffused with enchantment, and Haldir knew that the little bower could only be discovered by one whose presence was demanded by the Lady or her mirror.

Galadriel stood, the embodiment of ethereal grace, and inclined her head to him, greeting him with her beatific smile. He felt her presence sweeping his mind, incorporeal fingers caressing his thoughts.

_Suilad, Haldir, Marchwarden of Lorien._

He was unnerved, even nettled, by the sudden intrusion, but he submitted, sensing some crucial reason lay behind her display of prowess. Her dulcet voice chimed in his head though her lips remained inscrutably poised.

_Fear not, Haldir. I will not touch what you do not wish to share, nor will I trespass unbidden, but you must understand what else it is you safeguard here._

Extending one fair hand, Haldir saw the cold glitter of a star-shaped adamant stone set in mithril. The band itself was intricately woven and scrolled, swirling around the facets of the stone like vines, and the jewel sparkled with unearthly light. His eyes widened at this unexpected revelation. Though he had never seen one, nor even heard them described, he knew with absolute certainty that Galadriel bore one of Celebrimbor's storied Elven rings.

_This is Nenya, the Ring of Water._

"She protects this realm as you do, yet she requires your protection as well. Will you guard her with your own blood?"

The sound of Celeborn's voice, earthy and deep and most decidedly issuing from the strapping figure behind him and not from the recesses of his mind, startled Haldir. He was uncertain if the 'she' he spoke of referenced Galadriel or her ring. Likely it was both. He presented his hand to Celeborn, who swiftly opened the flesh of his palm with the edge of his dagger. Haldir's blood flowed crimson to the ground at Galadriel's feet and was swallowed up by the earth. He shivered; his charge felt now even more solemn: he had been drawn into a sacred trust he had not expected, and the burn and throb of the wound would remind him persistently throughout the night of the profundity of his oath.

_Her presence here is known only to those who must know, and to all others it appears as nothing more than a fine bauble. You are one of those who must know. Guard her well, Marchwarden, and she will guard us all._

Galadriel withdrew her whispering touch but held his eyes for a long while and he did his best to set aside his discomfiture under her appraising gaze. When at last she nodded to him, signaling the affirmation of his vow, he took her long, tapering fingers in his hand, finding that as delicate as they were, they were also warm and strong. He kissed the pale hand, silently vowing to keep its secret.

* * *

Haldir arrived at his own revels belated and subdued. He felt well and truly overwhelmed, and the disclosure of his Lord and Lady inspired many questions. Would the presence of a Ring of Power in these woods provide them with a greater measure of security, or would it call to evil as the flame beckons the moth? Who besides the Ringbearers knew of the rings and their whereabouts? He had little time to contemplate these mysteries before others took notice of his arrival, and Rúmil launched himself indecorously at him in welcome, Taurnil following close behind with a brimming mazer of wine.

It was a blessing to have cause for celebration. The prior seasons had been spent mourning the dead and repairing the ravages wrought on the Wood. Wine blunted the hard edge of grief and familiar songs sung with brothers-in-arms brought succoring levity to the wardens of Lorien. One by one, they approached Haldir and made their oaths to him in their own private and personal ways. Feredir, unsurprisingly, kept his distance, but his face had lost the callow sneer that often sharpened his otherwise handsome features. He still limped from the injury he had received on the banks of the Anduin.

Haldir was plied with much wine and merrily feted as was the tradition of the guards. A young archer with whom Haldir had a passing acquaintance made himself conspicuous, keeping himself in Haldir's line of vision constantly throughout the night without ever coming too near. With the poignant chagrin of hindsight, Haldir recalled his own similarly brash overtures to Elemmakil. The thought of it made him smile, as did the persistent archer. Another night, perhaps, he would have given the Elf a certain look, a subtle signal, and they would have slipped off together, but tonight the thought held no appeal. Though the wine warmed his belly and the laughter of his comrades lightened his spirit, the significance of the evening's events had made him thoughtful and he wished for quieter company. There was also one whose encouragement he desired to hear. After a time, he bade goodnight to his brothers and a select few of his closer companions and edged away to the trails beyond the garrison. The archer did not see him go.

Another, however, did. An unexpected figure stepped out from the darkness, a bold stride made awkward by a wound not yet healed. The moon cast a wary glow on his vulpine features. Chin held high, he regarded the Marchwarden before him. No words crossed his lips; speech was, perhaps, too high a price for pride to extract, but the inclination of his head and the touch of hand to heart conveyed his message, and his salute was returned in kind. Clasping forearms, their silent accord was marked by the night birds and the trees alone. 

* * *

The scuff of footfalls on the winding staircase and the familiar cadence of stiff leather soles on worn wood taking two steps at a time alerted Galion to his imminent visitor. He grinned as the quiet of the night was gently breached by the hum of a jaunty martial tune.

Haldir did not stop to knock, but pushed open the door far enough to spy his friend in a most familiar pose- stretched out on his couch in his nightclothes with a book in hand- nor did he wait for Galion's invitation before crossing the threshold.

The healer's eyes lingered for a beat on his reading, and when at last he looked up, his heart seized: arrayed in polished plate and glowing mail, new crimson cloak gracing broad, proud shoulders, Haldir was as glorious and imposing as Galion had ever seen him even if his face evinced some indefinable restlessness.

_He comes in the guise of Beleg Cuthalion,_ Galion thought in wonder. _Yet in truth, it is Túrin he plays. He is the hero and I the one who seeks him faithfully, the one who follows him, as Beleg followed Túrin, even to his doom. _

Moonlight coursed over his magnificent form and burnished the graceful curves of his armor before he closed the door behind him. He carried a bottle of what Galion recognized as Ethuilion's finest vintage in his hand, a gift, no doubt, to his uncle on this most momentous day.

"Would you deny them their guest of honor, then?" he teased.

"They are all deep in their cups."

"And you are not?"

A noncommittal shrug rolled upward into a sly smile, the look of abstraction dispersing with the lift of his shoulders. He swept through the _talan_, scarlet cape snapping at his heels, and the healer heard him in the kitchen, rooting in the cabinets. He returned with goblets in hand and breezily slapped Galion's legs off the sofa, settling himself in their stead while Galion snorted at the easy way he commandeered the better part of the cushion, sprawling magnificently, as if he were a king on his throne.

"By all means, make yourself comfortable, _híren_," Galion laughed.

Haldir grinned over the goblets and handed one to his friend, who lifted it in a silent toast. With a series of rhythmic clicks, Haldir disassembled his armor and pulled his heavy hauberk over his head, letting it slump noisily to the floor, stopping once to refill his already empty mazer.

"So why have you come to steal my cushions and disrupt my reading? Was your armor too heavy for your delicate limbs to withstand? Too many stripling soldiers vying for your attention?" Galion's jests aimed to draw the true tale of Haldir's thoughts this night. "Perhaps you are simply too grand now to fraternize with the masses?"

Haldir laughed. "It is all of these things and more beside."

His bright look faded then, and the pensiveness returned. The goblet was set aside for a moment while he stretched and curled his fingers, eyes set on the angry slash across his palm. Galion eyed it with curious concern; he had not known bloodletting to be part of the wardens' ceremony, but then there was much of soldiering that remained unfathomable to him.

"Tell me, Galion. Have I truly the makings of a Marchwarden, or am I a mere pretender in a bright cloak?"

The healer sipped his wine, enjoying the swirl of black currant and oak notes across his tongue, and considered his friend's strange loss of confidence.

"This path has ever been at your feet, has it not? Elemmakil groomed you for this post from the first. Wherefore this maudlin turn?" He took up Haldir's hand as he spoke and ran his fingers over the red seam, soothing the flesh and closing the wound with his touch.

"This is all I have ever wanted, yet I still feel unequal to the task," Haldir admitted with some reluctance. "Elemmakil and my father cast long shadows; I fear I will never emerge from them in my own light."

"You will. I have faith. Your men have faith. It is you alone who doubts." Hoping to dispel the mists of sorrow and return some gaiety to his friend's face he stretched out his leg and nudged Haldir with his foot. "Perhaps you merely fish for praise. Have you not been exalted enough this eve that you need pretty words from me to bolster you?" He leaned in to swipe the bottle, but Haldir was quicker and held it out of reach.

"Nay, rank before beauty!" he crowed before topping off his own goblet.

Galion kicked out again in mock umbrage and Haldir relinquished the bottle, lapping spilled wine from his wrist and the back of his hand.

"Let us pretend, then, I am merely fishing: do I have the markings of a leader?"

"You most certainly have the arrogance!"

"Knave! I should have you lashed for insubordination."

Galion cocked an eyebrow smugly. "Ah, but I am no warden. You hold no sway over me."

"Nay?" Haldir's grin became a leer. "So if I were to order you on your knees before me…"

Galion's smile faltered for the barest of moments before he replied. "Then you send me where I would go of my own volition."

Haldir drew breath and shifted. "Is that so?"

With the feline grace of a courtesan, Galion slipped from the couch and maneuvered between Haldir's legs, resting his arms along Haldir's thighs.

"It is so."

His eyes dropped pointedly to the apex of Haldir's thighs, Haldir's awakened interest showing in the strain of his breeches, before looking up coyly.

"And how would you have me serve you, here on my knees?"

Haldir's eyes fluttered closed, and when he spoke, his voice was ragged from more than just wine. "I would see that tormenting mouth of yours put to better service than taunting me."

"Would you?"

Galion's hands moved to the lacing on Haldir's breeches, loosening the knots with merciless leisure, stroking heat and hardness as they moved. Haldir's eyes fixed on those fingers as the ties unraveled, and simply watching those long, fine digits do their lazy work quickened his breath. Behind his arousal and the pleasant flush of wine, he was still poignantly aware of the complicated nature of their friendship, its ill-defined and mutable boundaries. But oh! To indulge himself in a moment of pleasure with a true familiar on this of all nights… did he not deserve at least that much? Was he not owed some immoderation on such an occasion?

Galion was not an unseasoned pup, incognizant of the temptation he presented, yet Haldir recalled with a guilty pang his last and thwarted encounter with his healer friend, which had ended in bitterness and a wound to Galion's trust which had been slow to heal. But that night, Haldir reasoned, he had tried to take that which had not been offered, and now what he desired was presented unbidden.

Need and drink warring with reason, he reached down and brushed back the dark locks that had slipped, fine and satiny, from Galion's braid and cupped a hand under the healer's chin.

"Perhaps the night's festivities have made me too bold…I do not wish you to think…"

He was silenced when Galion slipped his hands beneath his tunic and slid them slowly up the warm skin of his torso, heat blossoming beneath the parallel trails of his thumbs as he drew them down over his stomach. The healer's robe had slipped from his shoulders and shadows danced across the musculature of his chest. "Do you wish me to stop?'

"No, yet…"

"It is a congratulatory gesture, nothing more."

At that, Galion pulled the placket of Haldir's breeches away and wrapped those long, limber fingers around his erection, his grey eyes still watching Haldir as he began to stroke it. A shudder wracked Haldir's body and he let his head fall back, widening the sprawl of his legs further to accommodate the healer. Oh, yes… he had earned these attentions, and relaxed into them fully.

Sublime suction and a knowing hand advanced and retreated in a rhythm that made his bollocks ache. One hand scrabbled and clawed at the damask fabric of the couch, the other traveled to the back of Galion's head, riding its delicious course up and down his singing flesh. As Haldir undulated more feverishly under the lash of tongue and the tease of teeth, the healer quickened his pace, his hand working in concert with his mouth to bring forth that delicious spike of pleasure that was suddenly, deliriously upon him.

Breathing harshly his dénouement, Haldir caught Galion by his tunic and pulled him off the floor and in close for a winded kiss. "It is most fortunate for you that you are not under my command, _gwador_, because my wardens will have little opportunity to see me in this position."

He rolled to lay Galion in his place and snaked down the couch, the friction of the damask on his sensitized flesh sending a frisson through his limbs. He plied the healer with his own show of ardent attention until Galion's body jerked and spilled beneath him.

They fell asleep half-dressed on the couch, arms and legs casually twined. Galion woke some time later, his skin prickling in the night's breeze. He regarded briefly the floor now littered with the legacy of ceremony- an empty bottle, relinquished armor and discarded clothing- heedful that, come morning, the spell woven in darkness and drink would be broken and Haldir would flee, retreating to the safety of unencumbered friendship, excusing this night as an aberration, the fault of too much wine and fraught emotion. But that would come later. He wandered into his bedroom and dragged the counterpane from his bed to cover them and settled back into the couch.

Well before dawn, he woke again as Haldir disentangled himself and moved cautiously from their nest. With stealth, he gathered his armor while Galion feigned sleep. He knew better than to ask Haldir to stay, and he did not wish to taint pleasant memories of the hours before with awkward conversation. Haldir cast no look behind him as he crept out the door, and this pained Galion a little, but there was nothing for it. Once alone, he thought briefly of moving to his bed, but in the end stayed curled on the sofa, where Haldir's scent still lingered. Haldir had come to him in both joy and desire, to share with him his most important night. It was more than he had expected, and where Haldir was concerned, he had long ago learned to expect very little.


	3. Chapter 3

**Lothlorien, Third Age 1990**

With a tired eye Haldir reviewed the muster rolls the roster of the outgoing patrol. He had grown accustomed to his clerical responsibilities, but no amount of acclimation would give him love for work done behind a desk. An Elf of brutish strength and preternatural agility, he lived for the heft of a sword, the pull of the bow, and the feel of earth or stone or bark beneath his feet. Yet despite a stubborn aversion the more staid aspects of his position, he wielded these tools with the same acumen as he did his other weapons, initiating his own strategies for the defense of his beloved realm with Celeborn's wholehearted endorsement.

The loss of so many warriors during the Dark Days had necessitated a reorganization of those who remained. Companies were reduced in size, and their duty tours were of lesser duration. Several _telain_in the trees around the borderlands were repurposed as field surgeries in the hopes that those too injured to last the journey to the healing houses would have a greater chance of keeping their lives. To that end, healers were now dispatched with each patrol. While some of the healers decried the change, those, like Galion, who had devoted themselves to the treatment of injuries wrought by violence and misadventure, wished only to go where they could best serve those who had need of their skills.

Lieutenants were named for each company. Orophin recused himself from consideration, preferring to serve under his brother, not to lead among others. As a result, the first lieutenancy was offered to Feredir. Haldir's closer companions expressed either incredulity or perhaps some disturbance in his faculties that he would bestow such an honor on his long-time rival, but Haldir defended his choice, knowing Feredir to be a valiant fighter in spite of their fractious history.

He had even bequeathed to Rúmil the choice of serving under Feredir or under himself and admirably refrained from gloating when Rúmil chose to stay with him. He imagined that this choice lay behind Feredir's unannounced visit to his quarters in the garrison and his demand to speak with the Marchwarden.

"Speak, then." Haldir gestured grandly, his voice overripe with munificence. "I suppose you want to vent your spleen that Rúmil would remain with me rather than transfer to your company."

With an aggrieved grunt and a narrowing of his eyes, Feredir bit out his words. "How cavalier, _sir_." Feredir invariably addressed him with courtesy in the presence of others, but alone together, formality was conditional upon the degree of civility each party could muster, and titles were oft delivered behind closed doors with more raillery than respect. "I will have you know it was I who asked Rúmil to remain under your eye. Do not look surprised, Haldir," he continued as the Marchwarden's brow edged skyward. "You offered me my rank because you admit I have a keen mind for warfare, did you not? I remember well those years when Elemmakil sent you abroad or shuttled you off to Tathalion's company, and I saw sage reasoning behind his actions even while they allowed me some amusement at your expense."

He ignored the peevish pursing of the Marchwarden's lips and forged on. "A commander keeping his lover near him in battle is courting disaster. I do not wish to have my loyalties divided between my men and my heart, and I do not trust myself not to put him before all others. With you, I know he will be safe, and I need not fear for my conscience. But it is not of this that I came to speak."

Still reeling from Feredir's candor and apparent wisdom, a moment passed before Haldir gestured to the lieutenant to continue.

"I have come to advise you that I plan on taking your brother as my bonded mate."

"I see." Haldir sank slowly to his chair, the quiet tension in the room ruptured by the sharp cadence of his fingers drumming on the desk. "How kind of you to consult with me on the matter." His tone had held more bite than he intended, and Feredir predictably bristled.

"Take note, Haldir. I am merely apprising you of my intentions, not seeking your approval, which I neither need nor desire."

Neither elf so much as blinked, but it was clear they were circling each other like wolves, hackles raised, though their disputes now carried far less heat than in those days when both were wound tight with the rashness of youth. Perhaps, Haldir mused from time to time, they simply rankled each other out of habit, their antagonism a steady and predictable ritual which stood firm against the perilous vicissitudes of time.

"I suppose I should be content you finally see your way to commit to him after so many years."

Feredir's lips drew back, baring fine, white teeth in a familiar sneer. "Yes, this matter has been a bone of contention in our house for some time."

"And now, something has come to pass that makes you think you are capable of fidelity you were unwilling to promise before?"

Haldir could see the muscles crawling beneath Feredir's skin as he called upon his full measure of restraint not to answer the insult with his fists. He backed down, knowing he had baited Feredir too much: he had no reason to suspect Feredir of dalliances, save his own ingrained prejudices.

"You, of all creatures, dare to speak to me of fidelity? How many beds have you graced this fortnight past?" Feredir snapped righteously. "I have ever been constant with him and I defy you to say otherwise. It was _he_ who vacillated, not I! I would have espoused him centuries ago, but long has he hearkened to _your_ words, _Captain_, that love and duty cannot be reconciled. So great was his fraternal adoration that he would forego his own happiness to live out your misguided ideals."

"And his mind has changed?"

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, the late afternoon sun gilding the edges of all it touched, but Feredir's face, angled as it was toward the window overlooking the archery lists, appeared almost soft.

"He has seen one brother take a wife, bear a child, and find boundless happiness and peace. He has seen another brother flit from bed to bed, spouting high-minded treatises on the importance of duty above all, without ever claiming happiness."

Haldir frowned. "I am content in my lot."

"I desire something greater than contentment," Feredir countered, his tone void of any ire, but rather evoking steadfast resolution. "I desire something greater for _Rúmil_ than contentment."

Thus chastened, Haldir could deny it no longer; Feredir's devotion to his brother ran deep, and it ran true. He sighed aloud.

"As do I. And if he finds his happiness with you, I will celebrate it. But I maintain for myself that a similar union would be detrimental to my ability to serve as I am called to do."

With the force and alacrity of a bow-shot, Feredir turned on him. "Are you more devout in your service, then?" The enmity of old flared brightly under the provocative insinuation Feredir perceived in the Marchwarden's words. "Have your sacrifices been greater than ours, _Marchwarden_? Does our dedication pale beside your red cloak of office? Manwë's breath, Haldir! Your arrogance knows no bounds!"

Haldir opened his mouth to object but Feredir waved his hand and backed toward the door.

"Nay, I care not for your floundering explanation. My soul seeks completion. It longs for its other half, and I know that binding myself to your brother will fulfill us both immeasurably. Why are Ilúvatar's First-born blessed with the capacity to love with such profundity if it were not a gift intended for each of us?"

His eyes shined with an earnestness Haldir would never have imagined they possessed when he turned from the doorway and quietly added, "I doubt you will believe me, but it saddens me truly that you would renounce such joy." 

* * *

And so it was that a year and a day passed, and Feredir made good his promise to take Rúmil as his own. Family and friends gathered to witness their vows in a blooming garden, amid a thousand tiny lanterns flickering star-like in the trees.

Much feasting and feting followed, and while the celebration swirled around him, Haldir saw Rúmil, who had this day shed his warden's greys for a most becoming blue tunic and embroidered breeches, step away for a time with Orophin, watched them sitting close together and speaking intimately with one another. Each of his brothers wore a secret smile as they shared whatever words or confidences were passing between them, and it was clear that this one simple act had wrought a new bond between them: the knowledge of a love known only by one who is wed. It was a circle from which he would ever be excluded. Deny it though he tried, it stirred an ache within him.

He shook those thoughts from his mind with sudden force. _Am I so petty-minded that I would begrudge my brothers their joy simply because I cannot share it? Nay… I would have them happy. I would see them cleave to the ones they love. Even Feredir._

The celebrated pair were presented with gifts and delighted in them. Haldir offered his first: to each, a pair of long, bone-handled knives wrought by the craftsmen of Mirkwood, souvenirs of his last journey to the blighted wood.

"I am told this is the make the Crown Prince himself favors," Haldir explained, though it was clear that both recipients were impressed by the fine workmanship of the lethally sharp blades.

"May you never have need of them," he added, and a chuckle returned from Feredir.

"My thanks, brother." Rúmil embraced him fondly and Haldir let himself be held there for a long moment, breathing in the familiar scents of cedar and pine from his brother's hair.

Released from Rúmil's clutches, his eyes fell on a beautiful lap harp, Feredir's gift to his intended. It was a lovely piece, honey-colored wood with a neck detailed in gold, and Haldir looked forward to hearing Rúmil's fingers dance upon the strings. He forgot, sometimes, that Rúmil played; his mother had taught him when he was small, when his brothers and father had gone off to war and left him behind. He had seemed to lose interest in music proportionally to his development as a soldier, and it was only when Feredir coaxed him that he returned to it. In duet, Feredir's deeper tones wove seamlessly with Rúmil's pure tenor in a tapestry of harmonious joy. Even Haldir could not help but smile when the duo offered up a song.

Rúmil stowed the knives in the oak chest which had been Orophin's gift. He had built the thing himself, carved each flower, leaf, and scrolling line into the yielding wood and finished it with amber varnish rubbed to a warm glow. It was truly an exquisite piece, demonstrative of the many years Orophin had spent learning the craft.

As he sat in the contented company of those he held most dear, Haldir could not help but notice with growing dismay that every other gift given the couple was a token celebrating happiness and a home together, a representation of their favored pursuits, or a demonstration of the skills and hobbies of the giver. His own gift stood apart from these; a reminder of a life of duty, a life of bloodshed and, too often, of despair.

This was, after all, the only life he knew. 

* * *

As the sky darkened to the deepest hues of night, their fellows dispersed, and alone in their talan, Rúmil and Feredir sealed their bond in blood and in the joining of their bodies. Impassioned by the surging heat of their new union, they loved each other long into the night. When the sky began to pale with the first light of morning, Feredir turned his head to espy a thoughtful look on his beloved's face.

"Where do your thoughts take you this morn?" he whispered into a peaked ear.

Rúmil tucked in closer to the arms that held him. "To my brother. That he does not have this… that he does not even fathom what he has forgone by holding himself away from love."

Feredir sniffed, his irritation at hearing Haldir's name in his marriage bed appeased somewhat by the overwhelming warmth of devotion he felt toward the one in his arms.

"It is his choice, and you shall not turn his mind if he does not wish it to be turned."

With a nod and slight frown, Rúmil accepted his spouse's pronouncement, and soon made a soft noise of contentment as a warm hand wandered across his chest and the musical tones of Feredir's voice spread like tendrils of a new-grown vine in the verdant recesses of his mind.

_Perhaps he will see how your eyes glow like stars, and he will know love's power to forge strength and beauty into pure radiance… he will see how our love has changed you, remade you, and he will seek it for himself. For you are changed, my valiant one…I wish I could describe to you how brightly you shine._

A lazy smile redolent of spent bliss and desire smoldering anew blossomed across Rúmil's face and he arched his body gracefully, pressed his lean limbs into the warmth that cradled him, and stretched back a hand to stroke the flexing flank of his mate.

_Show me_, was his silent reply.

Notes: The concept of Elves marking their marriage with a blood vow originates with the extraordinarily talented Eressë, who has very graciously allowed me to borrow it for Haldir's tale. Many thanks to her for both her creativity and willingness to let me use it to my own advantage!


	4. Chapter 4

**Lothlorien, Third Age 2851**

To mortal vision, the approaching figure seemed merely a weathered traveler swathed in grey. A keener eye would note, however, that the spry steps and supple limbs marking the elder's progress quite belied the appearance of age. The guardians of the northern marches made no move to hinder his advance, and as he neared the eaves of the wood, he tipped up the broad brim of his hat and called out in a strong voice, "What's this? Have the Elves of the Golden Wood no greeting for a weary old man?"

With a knowing grin, Haldir stepped out from the shadow of the treeline. "Well met, Mithrandir! You know your presence is always welcome here."

The wizened mouth of the Maia turned up in a smile, but his wiry brows remained furrowed over clever blue eyes.

"My presence may be welcome, but I fear the news I bring is not."

* * *

Grim lines of care cleaved the ageless face of the Sinda lord as he paced the chambers. No consternation marred his wife's delicate features as she sat still as stone, her hands folded quietly in her lap, but her unease was palpable to both the Maia and her mate.

"I am convinced," Mithrandir emphasized. "The time for action has come. We must strike. Our blow must be hard, and it must be swift."

Galadriel lifted her eyes from Nenya's cold sparkle and fixed them on the fiery glow of Narya on the Wizard's bony finger. The rings called to one another, the power of each jewel thrumming in the presence of a sibling band. She felt two pairs of keen eyes upon her and she spoke.

"This is no matter for Lothlorien alone. We must reconvene the Council."

* * *

The Imladris contingent made haste to Lothlorien. Behind the advance guard, Elrond and Círdan, the ancient lord of the Havens, rode in tandem, with the mighty captain of the Imladris guard at their right and Gildor Inglorion on their left. Haldir was glad to see the beaming face of Ausir in the ranks, he who had been a jolly companion in the years of his youth when Elemmakil had sent him abroad to roam with Gildor's band. The face of his erstwhile leader was also a joy to behold, for he had not seen Gildor since fighting beside him at the battle of Fornost.

Ever cognizant of protocol, the Marchwarden attended Lord Elrond and Lord Círdan before greeting his friends, welcoming the ancients to the Golden Wood and seeing to the care of their beleaguered mounts himself. The retinue would ride no further than the forest borders; already word had come that Celeborn and Galadriel had departed Caras Galadhon with Mithrandir, and would meet them there, under the eaves of the wood, so as to depart for Isengard at the rise of the sun with all due speed.

When there was time to speak, there was much to say. Ausir and Haldir huddled close over their bowls when at last the time came to sup, and even Gildor was not above offering the occasional morsel of gossip to spice the simmering stew of their chatter, though Haldir was just as eager to hear news from abroad of a more practical variety: the movements of the yrch, the paths of scurrilous bands of men who lay in wait for travelers, wolf packs in the barrens of Eriador. It was his business to know what passed outside his borders, though his duties now stayed him from the long sojourns he had once undertaken.

Ausir, of course, had many yarns to spin, and Haldir all but rolled with mirth at the ongoing saga he detailed, a campaign of pranks waged between himself and the elder of Lord Elrond's twin sons. In his latest misadventure, a relaxing soak in Imladris' renowned hot springs had ended in abject humiliation when he realized that Elladan had absconded with his clothes, forcing a long walk back to his quarters in nought but his skin. It had been repayment for Ausir exchanging the contents of Elladan's wineskin with vinegar. As he spoke, he gesticulated wildly, his hands flapping birdlike about his head, and after a long stare, Haldir trapped one of those hands within his own as he might snatch a sparrow from a limb. He paid no mind to his friend's befuddlement, but loosed his grip to heed the hand more closely and confirmed his suspicions: the first finger of Ausir's right hand was shackled with a plain silver band.

"Wonder of wonders! Ausir, whose name has been sung by countless Lorien maids in their midnight throes has been tamed at last!"

Ausir's sheepish grin soon broke to a wide smile. "Aye. Though I would not say tamed," he added forcefully. "Nellas is her name, and come harvest-time, we are to be wed. You would like her, Haldir, for she is as keen as she is lovely." The Noldo's grey eyes glittered at the very mention of his distant love. "She won me completely. And I find that I am more than willing to be defeated by her. She is the better part of me."

Hearing his boisterous and formerly bawdy companion wax poetic as a young mooncalf turned Haldir thoughtful; he could not imagine Ausir a docile husband, yet the idea of it clearly gave his friend great joy. Just as he had seen it give Orophin and Rúmil great joy. Again, he was assailed by a pang of wistfulness that he could not articulate.

He squeezed Ausir's hand tightly and then withdrew his clutch. "My heartiest congratulations, then! I wish you every joy with her, _mellon-nin_."

* * *

When the remainder of the party had retired to the _telain_ to rest for the long ride ahead, Haldir made his nightly rounds. Venturing a ways into the woods, he espied Glorfindel standing alone, looking up through the trees and into the night sky. The mighty Captain of Gondolin and Imladris radiated a subtle incandescence, his very skin marking him as one apart, one of greatness. Though he had fought under Glorfindel's sword at Fornost, he had met the warrior only in passing, and doubted his name had even been known to the Elf. Haldir was in awe of him; his presence and magnitude rendered him intimidating even at a distance. Haldir wondered if Ecthelion had been so powerful to behold. He quickly turned aside, not wishing to disturb the Elf Lord's thoughts, but stealthy as he was, the Elda had an almost preternatural awareness of his environment and turned to face him.

"How fare the borders this eve, Haldir of Lorien?"

Haldir respectfully inclined his head before answering. "Quiet, my Lord."

Glorfindel watched him, sizing him up with his vitreous blue eyes as if there were some knowledge he would glean from the planes and slopes of Haldir's face. Of a sudden, Haldir felt the disquietude of his novice days; only one other's look had held him with such knowingness, with a gaze that had stolen past raiment and flesh to see into the very heart of him, and centuries had passed since even that first set of perspicacious eyes could hold him rapt in such a manner. The last time Haldir had believed that the weight of a stare could buckle him at the knees was the very last time Elemmakil had looked at him before the siege that took his life.

"You fought bravely at Fornost."

The silence of the night was buffeted by the deep, accented speech of the Balrog-slayer. "You were under no obligation to ride out with us, yet you did, and acquitted yourself well. Gildor oft speaks of your mettle. He is fond of you, my wandering friend is."

Haldir felt a rush of gratitude for Gildor's praise, and pride that Glorfindel had taken notice of him at all during the chaotic days of the long-passed campaign. Yet he could not help but to feel uneasy in this Elf's presence. In truth, it seemed as if Glorfindel were strangely wary of him; there was a coolness in his demeanor which did not sit well with Haldir. He could think of no words to fill the awkward silence, and he had begun to assemble some excuse he might utter to take his leave when Glorfindel spoke again.

"You were Elemmakil's lover for some time, were you not?"

The question put Haldir on the defensive. While their relation had long since ceased to be a secret, grief at the loss of his friend and former lover impelled him to move all thoughts of their time together to a guarded place. Cherished memories had been carefully enshrined deep within him, and he did not lightly dredge them up for the scrutiny of a stranger.

"After a fashion," Haldir conceded, hoping Glorfindel would take the discussion no further down this precarious path.

"That is no small thing, you know," Glorfindel continued, either incognizant of or indifferent to Haldir's choler. "No small thing at all, for him to have loved you."

Bristling at the persistent invasion of his privacy, his tone grew sharp. "We were indeed lovers, my Lord, but I was not his beloved. I hope that is clarification enough."

Glorfindel smiled with his lips tight together, and Haldir could not decipher the expression, whether it was wry or rueful.

"Perhaps he did not voice the words, but I have little doubt he loved you as well as he was able."

_As well as he was able_. Aye, and therein lay the rub, for he was not able to love Haldir with his full heart; the greater portion of that organ had been given to another, and what remained was an arid landscape scored with the memory of ancient hurts, no fertile soil remaining to nurture their ill-starred romance. Only the bramble of discipline and duty could thrive there, and thus he had cultivated those particular weeds until there was no longer Elemmakil but only the Marchwarden. The thought of it distressed Haldir, even after all this time. Even understanding, as he did, that Elemmakil had sought to save them both from folly. Even after he accepted that his own fate would likewise blossom, fruits of love strangled by the encroaching vines of necessity and responsibility.

But if Glorfindel, who was no friend, for all his great deeds and fabled glory, could so blithely pick the locks to his private store of memories, Haldir thought the least he could do would be to see the gallant's own recollections burgled. He favored Glorfindel with a inquiring look of his own before speaking.

"Why is it, my Lord, that Elemmakil never sought you out? He spoke little of you, and only ever of your feats in Imladris, never of your heroics in Gondolin, though it was my understanding he escaped with you."

"I imagine that to see me would have recalled to him horrors he sought to forget," Glorfindel evenly intoned. But Haldir, his focus now keen, had espied the slight twitch which gave away the Golden Flower, and Glorfindel himself knew that the Marchwarden was not gulled.

"It was always I who was dispatched to Imladris, even when he would have been better suited to the task." While no question had been posed, insinuation resonated in the words. Glorfindel dipped his head, acknowledging his imminent concession.

"In Gondolin, Elemmakil bore little love for me, and I had little for him."

Haldir was silent, waiting.

"I, too, loved Ecthelion, you see. But he broke with me. He had found another that he held more dear. A runtish lad of unexceptional birth who I, myself, taught to hold a sword." He laughed bitterly. "You can imagine how galling it was for the Lord of the House of the Flower to be defeated by a mere and untitled stripling he himself had trained up!

"But the stripling grew strong, and even I could not fault his skill, or his dedication to Ecthelion. And as he grew, their love seemed likewise to grow until even I with my jaundiced eye could do nought but wish them happiness, though it ever pained me to see them together. Ecthelion and I remained boon companions, but my heart did not forget the love it held for him.

"Ecthelion wished to bind himself to Elemmakil. He had commissioned betrothal bands, and planned to make his proposal during the celebrations of Tarnin Austa, but it was not to be. On that last day, amidst the fire and slaughter, I saw Ecthelion fall with the balrog, and I believed that had he not concerned himself with Elemmakil's welfare, he would have escaped the square to the safety of the tunnel. I believed he died so Elemmakil might live, and when we met at last on the Echoriath, Elemmakil saw my face, and he knew full well what I believed, for he believed it himself."

Glorfindel turned his piercing eyes away and focused them somewhere in the middle distance. Haldir stood silently beside him, recalling Elemmakil's implacable guilt and grief. What possible response was expected of him after such revelations? The moments dragged on as he considered his words.

"And now? Do you still blame him for Ecthelion's death?"

Pain and fondness flickered unbidden across Glorfindel's comely face.

"Nay, I do not. In Mandos' care I had ample time to acknowledge that Ecthelion was fated to die that day. Had he survived the balrog, he would have stayed in the square to fight to the last. He was the most beautiful and most valiant creature I have ever known, and he died bravely, just as he lived.

"I returned to Arda with memories of my first life intact, but the emotions that accompanied them had been muted, blunted by contemplation in the Halls of Waiting. I remembered my jealousy of Elemmakil, remembered our rivalry, but I no longer felt the burn of it. I weep for Ecthelion even still, but grief does not drive me, nor did the faint taste of old resentment. I even came to regret that Ecthelion did not take Elemmakil to wed sooner; perhaps the strength of a blood-bond would have twinned their fortitude and brought them both out of the fray alive."

"More likely it would have seen them both dead," Haldir grumbled. "Elemmakil himself owned that Ecthelion's love for him became his ultimate weakness."

Glorfindel gave him a look of curiosity mingled with concern. "Where love is given and returned, there is no weakness, _pen-neth_."

"If you had forgiven Elemmakil, why then did you not seek him out?" Haldir queried, refusing to acknowledge the Elda's last remark. "Perhaps you might have grieved your loss together had he known he was no longer your enemy."

Now Glorfindel gave Haldir a grin that was shrewd and ironical. "That we were no longer enemies would not have been enough to make us friends. Why court pain, his or mine, by reexamining another time and another life? Elemmakil never stopped blaming himself for Ecthelion's death. Nothing I could have said would have freed him from his guilt, nor was it ever my place to absolve him."

The smile slipped then, and the balrog-slayer's face turned sober and earnest. "When I heard that Elemmakil had taken a new lover, one with whom he shared his heart and not simply his bed, I wanted only to know that he who had once been worthy of Ecthelion would uphold Ecthelion's memory by himself choosing one who was worthy."

He offered Haldir his arm to clasp and met his eyes straight on. "I know now that you were." 

* * *

While Haldir was being accorded merit by an ancient hero, Galion was being garlanded with laurels of his own of a more intimate variety, and these from his well-lettered friend, only of late returned from a protracted sojourn in Imladris.

The scribe brought with him tales of the great library of Elrond; of the stately loremaster, Erestor, who spoke and read all the tongues of Arda with effortless facility, and who could, with almost unworldly precision, locate any one of the thousands of ancient and priceless books and scrolls seemingly in less time than it took for an eye to blink. A massive tome detailing the destruction of Eregion had even been penned in his own hand, as he had been spectator to both the realm's founding and its fall.

The scribe also bore back his playful demeanor and a hunger for less cerebral pursuits Galion was more than willing to sate. Their camaraderie was effortless, and many were the moments that Galion found himself wishing that their relations sprang from a deeper well than mere physical attraction and the conviviality of friends. But all in all, the scribe was a generous lover who made few demands on his time and none on his heart.

Moreover, his attentions never left Galion feeling bereft.

Since his installation as Marchwarden, Haldir had shared his favors with Galion now and again, though their tumblings involved pleasures only of a superficial bent: a furious stroke; a hot grind; a languorous suck. Always did Haldir hurriedly and guiltily slink off before dawn like a faithless spouse, and always Galion feigned sleep and watched him leave through unfocused eyes, knowing their trysts to be a thing that would not be acknowledged until the next time Haldir appeared at his door wearing a hungry and acquisitive expression. Galion had not the strength of will to turn him away, though he paid the price each time in the currency of a cold bed and an impinging sense of foolishness.

It took him aback, then, to wake and find a tall, fair-haired galadhel lingering outside his door that morning. His heart leapt in his breast at the discovery. But when the figure turned, he saw that he had mistaken the identity of his visitor. 'Twas not Haldir at all, but Taurnil who stood before him, and he hoped for his faithful friend's sake that his face had not betrayed his disappointment, and he called out a greeting with all the merriness he could muster.

"Well met, my friend! What brings you to my door at so early an hour?" He noticed that Taurnil's eyes went immediately to the scribe, who was now departing from Galion's quarters. Taurnil nodded officiously to the departing Elf, but that was all he offered in the way of greeting, and Galion's question went unanswered. Taurnil's demeanor was preoccupied, his usual ebullience muted.

"I would have thought your leave would find you sleeping well into the morning," Galion teased as they walked toward the healing houses, hoping to see a return of the customary trickster grin.

Taurnil merely shrugged. "I keep a soldier's hours; 'tis habit now, duty or no."

They trudged along in silence until Galion could stand it no longer and begged Taurnil reveal the source of his distemper.

Taurnil studied Galion's face thoroughly before answering, his blue eyes wide and overbright with emotion. Each word was birthed from his lips with careful consideration and conscious intent.

"I suppose it was but a foolish hope, but I had thought that if your heart had turned from Haldir it might turn to me. But I see now that another has usurped even that secondary place."

Galion's stomach clenched; he knew what pride this admission cost his friend. Long had this truth been known to Galion, though Taurnil did not speak directly of the depth of his feelings. Ever had Galion pretended not to notice the sidelong wistful glances, endeavored to ignore the subtle insinuations and to misconstrue Taurnil's disproportionate anger at Haldir when Haldir and the healer had fallen out with each other long ago. But now it had been spoken plain, and Galion was seized with a desperate pain that he could not return Taurnil's affection in kind. But neither could he bring himself to speak words of indifference to one who had granted him more devotion and far more constancy than he could ever wish of Haldir.

"My friend and I share our bodies alone," he gently explained, not daring to add that his heart had not turned, nor likely ever would.

* * *

The distant vision of clustered riders thundering overland from the South announced the imminent arrival of the returning company. In little more than a fortnight's time, the band had ventured forth to Isengard, convened their Council, and departed; now Haldir was met with grim faces, the grimmest of all belonging to his lord, who sought him out in a cold burn of temper once their honored guests from Imladris and beyond had continued onward to the comfort of Caras Galadhon.

"Mithrandir has proof that the Necromancer is no less than Sauron in disguise, and he advised the Council to mount an attack before the villain has time to rally his forces again."

The identity of the Necromancer revealed! Haldir was both astonished and horrified. "Will the attack come from Lorien alone? What, think you, is the best strategy? I speak for all of your men when I say we are ready to rid our borders of his taint," Haldir assured him, the mere mention of battle coalescing his blood. "Say the word and we shall suit up for battle."

Celeborn snorted. "Saruman would have us wait. He counsels patience. He feels Morgoth's minion represents little threat." At Haldir's look of patent disbelief, he smiled mirthlessly, his mouth tight and bloodless as a scar. "He is the leader of our Council, and thus the wisest of the Wise. We must stay our swords until such day as we can convince him that to let this malice linger at our door is folly."

The argent-haired Elf Lord paced to disperse the tension of an arduous ride laid atop his growing frustration at Saruman's blithe dismissal of a menace which loomed like a storm cloud over their lands. More and more, he distrusted Saruman's judgment, though he did not speak his misgivings aloud. Both he and Galadriel had both rallied behind Mithrandir to lead the Council, but the Grey Pilgrim demurred; Celeborn wondered if the White Wizard was avenging this insult now through his inaction.

"Speak nothing of this. It would cause unnecessary panic."

"Of course, my Lord," Haldir agreed.

The Lord of Lorien and his Marchwarden stood shoulder to shoulder, surveying the vast wastes across the Anduin and the blackened treeline of Mirkwood in the distance, one remembering the remote slaughter of his childhood realm, the other, bloodshed of a more recent vintage. Haldir's eyes knew the very spot where his once-lover and erstwhile mentor had fallen, his sword flashing to the last, and long they lingered there.

The plangent voice of the Sinda echoed the words in his heart.

"Let us pray we do not wait for long. I would see blood repaid with blood, and I would see it soonest."


	5. Chapter 5

**Third Age 2939 **

Sleep had come readily. Galion had been long delayed at the healing houses preparing the packs of fresh herbs, salves and bandages needed to replenish the surgeries at the border, and when at last he slipped between his cool sheets, it took only moments for him to drift off. His own pack and bedroll stood propped beside the door beneath his thick wool cloak. He would rise before the sun in order to join up with Haldir and the outgoing patrol.

But earlier even than the dawn came a frantic pounding on his door that shocked him from his reverie, and said door opened to reveal a pale and haggard face.

"My wife…she is giving birth, but the babe has come too soon and she is bleeding!"

Galion ran behind the Elf over darkened paths that twisted and turned into the forest, and along the way, the frightened spouse explained in winded fits and starts that his wife's water had broken and the pains of labor had come on hard and fast, though the child was not expected for some weeks more.

"Forgive me for intruding on your sleep, but your home is closer than the healing halls, and I feared that to travel any further would only set both her and the babe at risk."

When Galion entered the talan, he was instantly glad that the Elf had come to him without delay. The volume of blood on the bed was of great concern to Galion, and the mother lay mewling and writhing on the bed, nearly insensate from her fear and pain.

"Bring me hot water and clean cloths," he told her mate in a calm, crisp tone, as much to occupy him with something other than his own terror as for the necessity of the items.

_Another must take my place in the morning_, he thought in passing. _First light will not find my business here concluded, and someone must accompany Haldir's patrol_.

He offered his most reassuring smile to the _elleth_. "It seems your little one is eager to greet you," he told her gently, and saw the flicker of relief cross her face as he settled in to begin his sensitive work. 

* * *

Galion rather missed his time with the patrol, and, he noted with disappointment, now that he had relinquished his spot in the rotation, it would be some time before he would take to the borders again. Yet he could not regret the reason he had been kept behind. The late-night birth had not gone smoothly. More than once he feared he would lose the mother from excess of bleeding, and after such travails only the Valar could say if she would bear another child. But their first sight of their tiny one rendered any concern over future offspring as insignificant and quickly overcome as a sudden summer shower. The babe was pale and tinier than most, and she cried little and weakly. In the first days, Galion feared she had not the strength to thrive, but she took readily to the breast, and within a fortnight looked as rosy and fat as any suckling, if a little smaller in stature.

The rest of his days had been occupied by the mundane workings of the healing houses. Those halls felt as familiar and comfortable to him as his own abode, and he knew that he was useful there: this day alone he had salved the burns of a smithy, set the broken arm of a youngling who had fallen from a horse (a mount he had been expressly forbidden to ride, his father again and again exhorted), and stitched a novice swordsman who had taken a flesh wound during a practice bout. As Galion sutured his forearm, the would-be warrior grumbled that he would have taken the victory had his foot not slipped on a patch of wet grass, and Galion was reminded of another blustering young swordsman whose arm he had patiently mended while only half-listening to a tale of scalded pride. He grinned at the recollection.

_Ah, but we are not young anymore_, Galion mused with a twinge of regret.

Yet while he enjoyed his time in the houses and the comfort derived from knowing that the bulk of his work there would be to tend minor hurts such as these, it was on the front lines that he had ever felt called to serve. All his childhood companions had become warriors: Haldir, Orophin, Taurnil, and so many others. He had wanted to go where they went, to aid them as he was able, and soon he had no choice but to do just that. He, like his friends, had still been counted a youth when the Elves of Lorien were called to the army of the Last Alliance. He would not have even been accorded full status as a healer until well after his hundredth year had dire need not intervened. So he came of age on the Dagorlad and honed his skills on the foul fields of war. He watched friends fall, and had found himself offering merciful death as well as surcease of pain. He had seen every possible way, he believed, that one being could wreak harm upon another, and while the very thought of it sickened him, he still knew only that he wanted to be where he was most needed, and that was not in the healing houses, but with the defenders of their land.

That said, there was a certain satisfaction to be had in receiving an earlier-than-usual dismissal from the Master Healer on a balmy evening because too many of Lorien's denizens were hale and hearty and had no need of his expertise; to know that no babes were rushing unannounced from their mothers' bellies, no one was falling from anything, nor being burned by anything, nor being cut by anything. This was such a night, and the spring air seemed ripe with possibilities, the sky taking its time in shedding the pale violet cloak of twilight for the darker mantel of night.

The itch of the greening season was in his blood, a decidedly predatory sensation, and it was easy to surmise what prey his hunter's gaze would fall upon this eve, which lissome form would soon find himself bent over a bed or ravaged on a brocaded couch, for here strayed fair Brethil, the scribe, alone and innocent as a lamb down the forest path, and right into Galion's line of vision. He was ripe for the plucking, his own blood coursing with the tides of spring, his hair pulled back demurely at the crown but loose and pale as the birch for which he was named about his shoulders, his slim build set off by a green silk sash pulled taut at his waist. A quirk of the eyebrows and a subtle nod in his direction more than sufficed to draw the Elf down the path that led back to Galion's talan.

The night proceeded merrily apace. So bawdy had their banter become ambling down the bosky walks where the air was scented with new lilacs, that the door barely closed upon them before items of clothing were hurriedly tossed aside and their more earthy celebration of the budding-time begun.

Soon, Galion tumbled the scribe onto his bed and buried himself in his wickedly warm body. He was spurred on by the purrs, whimpers, and grunts of his scholarly pet, who cast half-lidded, wet-lipped looks over his shoulder, and Galion took each smoldering glance as an invitation to plunge deeper and harder.

He teased the scribe to the brink and back, stopping him just short of his release, and he could not help but chuckle at the noises of umbrage that rewarded his efforts. As comeuppance, Brethil clenched his lovely, taut buttocks and bore down hard on Galion, who suddenly found himself racing inescapably toward a blinding finish of his own.

The next time he tidied up his quarters, he saw a flash of green beneath the bed: a green silk sash inadvertently kicked away in the frenzy of an assignation and forgotten in the aftermath of repeated and strenuous bouts of carnal indulgence. He folded it in half and draped it over his headboard that he might remember to deliver it at a later date. Or bind Brethil to his bed with it, he considered impishly; whichever opportunity arose first. 

* * *

Night came, and with it the advent of the New Moon. The last silvery shaft of Ithil's glow had been blotted out by darkness and the only light remaining was held in the distant flicker of small, cold stars.

The borders had been peculiarly quiet of late, and when not standing sentry, Haldir's men passed the hours with conversations held in barely-audible whispers that slowly unfurled in the forgotten pockets of the forest like night-blooming flowers.

Already on his rounds he had traversed half the distance between Feredir's patrol and his own, and at each checkpoint, the wardens had nothing to report. Yet as he made his way back to his camp, he heard a rustling of leaves that had not been moved by any breeze. This sound was not the foraging of night-creatures. It was a subtle flurry of foliage that set the fine hairs on his neck to standing.

Before him stood a mighty oak he had known for nigh on seven centuries, its trunk grown thick and straight beneath rough bark, shifting its branches in the windless night, beckoning him. He put his hands against the bole.

"What news, old friend?"

At first, he perceived naught but the sounds of night. And then, lower than even a whisper, the reedy voice came:

_Trouble…Trouble…_

Haldir's heart faltered. "What has passed?" he begged of the oak, "and where?"

_The pines are weeping. They taste blood. Seek the pines._

The pines, the pines! There were likely five hundred pines or more in this forest!

Just then, a nightjar lit on a low branch and called to him, singing a shrill alarm before taking wing. Haldir followed. As he doubled back to his own men, he whistled, that they might hear his alarm and prepare for attack before his arrival, and sure enough, when he passed the base camp, there was no sound, no leavings, not even a footprint to suggest that a band of Elves had moments before been idling there. The first line had vanished into the trees, and the second line had receded to their places deeper in the woods, utterly invisible except to each other, and to their Captain.

"You three, with me." He commanded in a whisper to the trio of archers nearest him. They slipped silently from the branches and followed his desperate flight after the path of the little bird.

She led them further north, toward the edge of the wood that opened on to the Gladden Fields. The sentries were fewer here, and spread further between, and at first he saw nothing amiss. Never had this border concerned the wardens. The Gladden Fields were broad and flat, and there was nowhere for a foe to hide or to gather unnoticed. He looked about again, and then he saw the pines.

_… They taste blood …_

Just inside the forest's borders, a warden lay on his belly in a stand of young firs, his head turned toward the path. Haldir suddenly felt as if he was plummeting from a cliff: he did not need the light of day to see that the pale green shoots of new spring grass had vanished under a spreading pool of blood, and one of his wardens lay in the center it, one sightless eye fixed on nothing, his mouth frozen in a silent scream. Simple murder had not been enough for the beasts who had slit the sentry's throat from ear to ear: the Elf's hair had been cropped, his braid lopped off at the nape of his neck as an obscene trophy.

One of the archers cursed, his voice strident with shock, and the sound snapped Haldir out of the trance of horror. When he turned to regard his men, they shuddered at the fire of vengeance blazing in his eyes, and at the strange and unearthly hiss of his voice.

"There is evil in our wood."

No sooner had he spoken but the shouting started, the tocsin sounding in earnest. Haldir and his archers left the savaged sentry and bolted toward the noise. Soon they found the wardens of the North Marches fully engaged with a band of Yrch. The beasts had gained entry to the woods and had passed nearly to the second line of defenders before they were either seen or heard.

_Impossible_! Haldir thought in the instant before he drew his blade. _How did we not hear them?_ But it was all too possible, all too real: the wardens had not heard the creatures until their knives were upon them. The sound of his orders parted the night like a blade, and it did not take long for reinforcements to arrive from the East and West. These Yrch were no rogues, this was a full horde, organized and armed to the teeth. Bolstered by the ease with which they had penetrated the supposedly inviolable borders of the Elf-Witch's domain, they cackled as they drove further in.

"_Hado i philinn!_"

At the Marchwarden's command, a rain of arrows sang through the trees, felling many but not yet enough.

"Again!" he cried, and once more the air hummed with white-fletched bolts. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the green cloak of a healer approaching, though he knew the Elf would come no closer to the skirmish; a dead healer was of no use to anyone.

The Yrch returned fire, and Haldir heard the squawk of an Elf and knew him pierced. He had no time to see who had fallen, for they were on him, swarming like bloated flies, and he lashed out with his sword, feral as any wolf. He had sensed another's presence nearby, and knew that when the creature at his left shoulder fell, it had fallen by the hand of Algamir, a companion from his youth.

A rallying cry of fresh voices rose up from the depths of the wood, and half of Feredir's company came into view, led by Feredir himself. For once his presence was not only welcome—it was desperately desired.

The wounded howl of one of his men turned his head, and he watched as Algamir doubled over from a blow. He moved to aid him but was caught by a blade that ripped across his arm, sending a searing charge of pain from shoulder to wrist. A thrust with his long knife kept the attacker at bay long enough for him to jump aside and regroup. Another well-landed blow and the fetid creature was crow's bait.

"Captain!"

He heard the warning just in time to see the gore-slicked scimitar swinging towards him. 

* * *

Tree to tree and bird to bird, the signal was sounded, and the Master Healer knew what had befallen the Marchwarden's patrol well before the runner reached him with a more coherent report than whispering leaves and terrified warbling could provide. Already he had sent the apprentices to fetch every healer in the Wood to the healing houses that they would be prepared for the arrival of the injured.

A wide-eyed young _elleth_ who had only just begun her training beat a desperate patter against Galion's door just as he was preparing his bath.

"We have received word… there has been a breach of the North marches." Panic had tightened her voice to a squeak, making her sound almost a child. She swallowed to compose herself, to slow her speech and steady her tone before she delivered the rest of her message, the part she knew Galion would be loath to hear. "The Marchwarden's patrol has been attacked. At least one has been killed and others are injured."

At her words, Galion could see only the Marchwarden's stricken face. But it was Elemmakil he envisioned (_"Galion, see to him!"_), not Haldir. Haldir was grey-faced and silent in his litter with blood on his lips and an arrow in his chest.

When the _elleth_'s hand lit on his arm, he realized that his recollection must have drained the color from his face.

"All are summoned." She had recovered herself and spoke calmly and firmly now, the sight of another's distress arousing her innate instinct to take action and give reassurance. "You must go."

The halls of the healing houses were a blur of moving bodies, a well-coordinated dance as the surgeries were prepared to receive the injured. Silver tools were perfectly aligned on their trays, cloths and bandages stacked, jars of salves and tonics to counteract each known orc-taint were quickly yet expertly prepared. Galion tamped down his fear beneath the echo of incantations as he recited under his breath the measures of herbs and powders and the steps of preparation for each potion; his hands stilled their nervous tremor by immersing themselves in useful work. Looking up at the sound of a cleared throat, he saw the Master Healer looming in the doorway, hands clasped placidly in front of his body.

"It will be some time yet before the casualties arrive," he told Galion equably. "But to my knowledge, the Marchwarden is not among them." He did not wait for a response, but simply turned and left Galion to his work, and to the heartening rush of his hope. 

* * *

The blade missed him by a hair's breadth, but the stroke he returned landed precisely where he aimed it, and the Orc fell with an outraged bellow. At last they had gained the upper hand. He heard a whistle- a signal that sounded in his blood- and knew that Rúmil was near. He ducked, and the shot that landed square between the eyes of the creature barreling toward him confirmed his brother's presence.

The arrival of the remaining members of Haldir's patrol marked the final surge of violence. Already the fighting had diminished to the point where the injured could be dragged from the fray. The Yrch, finally knowing themselves beaten, began one by one to attempt escape. What little coordination they had shown during their initial assault vanished, and each abandoned his foul friends to save his own skin. All who fled were stalked and slaughtered by the wardens, whose taste for vengeance had flared to a vicious hunger only sated in the spilling of black blood.

Dawn was breaking when at last the din of battle ceased, and Haldir rushed to take accounting of his men. Many were injured, and not for the first time he wished Galion was with him, reassuring and strong, and not this healer he hardly knew, though this Elf's skills were likely every bit as formidable as Galion's. Already, some had been dispatched to the healing houses, deemed too severely harmed for the healer to manage at this remote station. Others were being tended by their fellows, and none looked so grim as to be near death. Only the sentry had lost his life this night, but Haldir could not allow himself to think on this loss yet when so much remained to be done.

The healer was bent over Algamir, closing his eyes. Haldir was chagrinned that his friend of old was so badly hurt as to require a healing trance and wondered why he had not been sent on with the other casualties. He could not fathom why the healer was covering his whole body with his cloak. The truth began to assert itself, and Haldir fought acknowledgement of it for a queer, suspended moment. Surely Algamir was not dead! Not this Elf who had been but moments before fighting at his shoulder. Not this Elf who had long ago shared his bed.

Haldir pushed the healer roughly aside and jerked off the cloak. Algamir should not be stifled under heavy wool! He must breath fresh air if he was to recover! But even as the fabric was pulled away, Haldir knew that the cloak had become a shroud, and that Algamir would not recover, would never more rouse to the caress of air, let alone to the caress of an old bedfellow. His uniform was black with blood from a wound to his belly; the very blow he had taken by Haldir's side.

"There was naught to be done. Even had he gone to the healing houses, they could have done nothing for him, save perhaps hasten his end."

The bald speech of the healer fell upon him like a curse and he fought against the urge to wail, to beat his fists into the ground and scream. Two of his men had fallen, two of the immortal brought to death on his watch. The woods had been defiled under his very nose, and he could not rage, could not weep, could not yet begin to mourn his loss or examine his shame or give voice the welter of emotion within. Others' eyes were upon him, looking to him for their strength, and he squeezed his fists tight until all color fled from his knuckles and took stilling breaths in through his nose. His hand only trembled a little when he laid it on Algamir's breast to murmur a threnody:

"_In gwidh ristennin, i fae narchannen, i reniad lín ne môr, nuithannen._"

The Marchwarden covered Algamir with his cloak and went about the ugly business that followed every battle, victory and defeat alike. 

* * *

The first wardens to arrive at the healing houses bore wounds that looked more grievous than they were in truth, and with herbs and sutures and binding and splints, all would soon find themselves mended. The next to arrive was not blessed with such fortune. The archer had been shot from his perch, and in addition to the damage he suffered in the fall, the arrow had struck him in his lung. It was all too familiar, and Galion had to shake from his mind the notion that the Silvan who lay on the table before him was Haldir. As he focused his energy, keen as any blade, on the wounds within, the Elf's body cried out to him of its damage and pain; it wept its tale of broken bones and lungs that struggled vainly for breath. The body begged for its release from the shackles of injury, but Galion was not yet ready to let it go. Slowly, carefully, he extricated the arrow from the Elf's lung. 'Twas a bad sight, yet no worse than Haldir's, and Haldir had lived. But even as the bleeding slowed and Galion's hands sent their palliative caress deep inside, the Elf continued to weaken, a fever raging like a fire within his fading shell. Galion called for the Master Healer, whose hands had brought both succor and peaceful passing to Lorien's Elves since Amdir's reign, and no sooner had he gauged the fever with the touch of his hand than he reached for the bloody shaft and sniffed it. His usually impassive face curdled with disgust.

"This one will not last the night. His blood has taken poison from the wound."

"Yet we have many antidotes for Orcish poisons! Are they of no use?"

The ancient Noldo shook his head. "Nay, for it was not poison on this arrow, but dung. The Orc rolled this bolt in his own excrement, and we have no antidote for that. Were he stronger, perhaps the fever could be controlled and we could purge the toxins from his blood, but his chances of lasting the night were slim even had his blood not been tainted."

Resigned and disheartened, Galion nodded. "What would you have me do for him, _Híren_?"

"Make his passage swift."

Alone in the surgery with the fading Elf, Galion again laid his hands upon the body, easing it down, down into profound sleep, and as the broken form sensed that the healer's hands were no longer coaxing it toward life, it released its weakening grip on the warden's soul, and by the time the candle had burned midway through its wick, he was gone.

"_No galu govad gen,_" he whispered, wondering if the Elf's _fea_ lingered to hear his words. 

* * *

Celeborn arrived at the borders shortly after dawn. The trees keened silently and dropped leaves and needles to carpet the ground where their guardians had fallen. The rank fumes of offal cloaked the verdure of the forest. Though the carcasses had already been dragged from the woods and piled on the field for burning, their black miasma lingered.

He watched his Marchwarden from a covert spot for a while before making his presence known. Haldir was stony-faced and pale, his arm bandaged, but otherwise bodily uninjured.

_Yet how fares his soul this morn, I wonder._

He moved crisply and offered brisk orders, and his wardens seemed almost relieved to have the distraction of his directives to keep them from their grief and anger. There was no better sop for pains of the spirit than work of the hands.

Celeborn stepped out of shadow and the Marchwarden was first to see him. His face seemed to pale further then, if there was indeed any blood left in his face to drain away. He squared his shoulders and approached with heavy steps, saluting but not speaking until he was addressed. He gave a solemn accounting of the night's events, and shouldered fully the blame Celeborn had not thought to assign him.

"I did not hear them, _Híren_. I thought it inconceivable, but they entered the wood without a sound. Perhaps the scout saw them, but he was dead ere he could call a warning. The wardens who engaged them say they heard nothing until it was too late."

Celeborn nodded grimly. "I have never known one Orc to be silent, let alone a passel of them. There is little doubt in my mind their footfalls were masked by Sauron's sorcery and their movements abetted by the moonless night. My Lady's magic may have broken the spell once they were within the woods, but not before. The Necromancer grows ever bolder and more cunning."

Haldir kept his chin level, but cast down his eyes. "I have failed you, _Híren_, and I have failed my men."

Celeborn's hand clamped hard on his shoulder. "The fault lies not with you. Have you foresight of which I am unaware?" Haldir shook his head. "Then you could not have predicted his methods."

"I should have been near when it happened."

"No Elf can be in all places at once. These indulgent recriminations do you no good, Marchwarden, nor do they help your men. Do not falter now and lose their confidence. These deaths are but more crimes to lay at Sauron's feet. Perhaps now Curunír will see the urgency of bringing him down.

"Go to your men, Haldir. They have need of you. Know that you bear no culpability for this night; I would have done no different. Another patrol has been sent to relieve you, and they will arrive by midday. The fallen need to be returned to their families as soon as can be done."

The Elf-Lord kept his hand on Haldir's shoulder, but now the touch carried something of the paternal, something conciliatory and concerned. After all, Celeborn knew better than most the weight of losing soldiers under his command.

"When your duties to your men have been discharged, I would have you take a meal with me, Marchwarden."

"Your offer is most kind, my Lord, but I cannot imagine I will have a stomach for it."

Celeborn canted his head in understanding and stepped away to speak to the Elves of the dispirited patrol. Presently, he turned back, taking in a deep breath of consideration, his bright, knowing eyes fixing on Haldir's.

"This is a time to be passed among loved ones, that your spirit might be buoyed by their tender care. Do not carry the burden of sorrow alone, and do not punish yourself with solitude."

He left Haldir to contemplate his words. Just where was he to pass this time, then? Where would he not be alone? Rúmil would stay here in the woods with Feredir and take refuge in their bond, but even had they both returned home with Haldir's company, his presence in their midst would bring no ease to any of them. Orophin would surely welcome him; had they not passed many nights together in grief after their father's death? Yet Orophin would find more comfort in Alquonís' sweet embrace than in the clasp of a brother. He looked around at his men, saw them offering solace to one another, sometimes in simple ways: with a steadying hand or a meeting of reddened eyes; sometimes with greater gestures: leading away one who was overcome that he might have a moment to grieve in the arms of a friend. But he knew well that this was _their_ grief, and as their Captain, it was something he could not share.

There in the woods, amid the trees and in the presence of his many charges, Haldir of Lorien had never felt more alone.


	6. Chapter 6

The Marchwarden led his men home in the early hours of the following morning bearing the bodies of their lost comrades. Their faces were solemn and weary. Haldir walked alone at their head, his face most grim of all.

Not for the first time, Elemmakil's words came to him, this time in the memory of a border skirmish fought in the earliest years of the age. It was the night Tathalion lost his first men, and Elemmakil consoled him, offering the wisdom of one who understood his anguish. _It is a captain's burden to carry the deaths of every man he loses_, he had explained to Haldir later. _I bear many upon my back, and it is ever an onus_.

_A curse upon your name, Elemmakil of Gondolin!_ Haldir silently inveighed as he traded his bloodstained grey woolens for his ceremonial armor and blood-red mantle. _Why are you not here to offer me your wisdom? For I am sore in need of it this day! There is no one who can share this burden with me, and I did not fathom it would be so very heavy. I fear I will stumble with every step._

When they reached Caras Galadhon, more bitter tidings awaited, for then Haldir learned of the archer's death in the healing houses. The news crushed him like a millstone and for a fleeting moment he feared he would sink to his knees under the weight of still more grief. Three families, then, would find him at their door soonest, presenting the blue cloak that a father, son, or husband had first worn with pride, and last worn as a winding cloth.

At each home, he delivered his sorrowful speech, and the rote repetition of the words blunted the biting edge of his own pain somewhat, yet where the ache receded, only emptiness remained, and that was little better. At the archer's _talan_, the door was opened by an elfling who smiled brightly to see the mighty Galadhel captain looming over him in his brightly polished panoply and scarlet cape. His mother did not smile; she knew what his visit portended and her chin quavered before he even began to speak.

_Ah, I am become the storm-crow! Young ones will flee from me, for they will look upon my face and see only a message of doom!_

As he gave his cruel soliloquy, the newly-made widow wept, and the smile faded from the little one's face, replaced by baleful eyes that stared up full of accusation and the one question Haldir could not answer: _why_. He thought he might sooner gouge out his own eyes than ever face that look of uncomprehending misery and blame again.

There was no moment of reprieve. The funeral pyre needed to be built without delay that the broken houses of three valiant spirits could be returned to the earth at the setting of the sun. Each splinter that drove into his hands as he helped to raise the bier seemed to him to be castigation from the trees, reminding him that he had failed to protect both them and his men.

When at last the interminable day had dimmed and the pyre had burned itself to ashes, he slipped silently into the woods to be alone with his heartache. But no tears sprang to his eyes. He was utterly numb. Without any task to occupy his mind and hands, he felt listless and untethered. _Do not punish yourself with solitude_, Celeborn had exhorted. Yet what else could he do, when solitude was all he possessed?

_No_, he corrected. _Not all I possess. Merely all I have claimed._ He walked deeper into the shadowed heart of the woods until he found the path that would lead him home. 

* * *

The latch clicked, followed by the barely audible complaint of wood as he tentatively opened the door, trying to still his hand from trembling as his fingers lit upon its smooth plane.

Haldir braced himself in the doorframe, his eyes blinking hard in the low light, reassuring himself that all was in its accustomed place: the boots lined up tidily by the door, the green cloak draped over the back of the chair, the mug abandoned on the mantel, its bottom no doubt stained with the dregs of this evening's tea. _Which had it been_, he wondered, _colt's foot and chamomile or betony and milk thistle?_Galion said nothing as he entered, simply watched him with sympathetic concern from the couch where they had trysted now and again, closing his tome on his finger and absently running his thumb back and forth over the leather binding.

_With a book, of course. Can anything be so horribly awry, then, if Galion is here, reading? This nightmare cannot be so great, can it, if he is here, and he reads as he ever did?_

When Haldir at last crossed the threshold, his cloak swung heavily with each step, imparting his footfalls a resolve his creased brow belied. As he tried to breathe, the air caught in his lungs, hitched in his tightening throat, and he feared he had lost the capacity for speech. Through the arch at the far end of the room, He espied the bedchamber, the bed neatly made, linens pulled up just so, the blue counterpane which had on occasion swaddled him in the languor following their dalliances pulled straight and smooth. And here, in the room where he stood, his eyes traversed the bookshelf and found a smooth, grey river stone. Small it seemed now; it was once big enough to wholly fill the hand of a child, big enough to contain within it all the secrets of rushing water and constellations, of hurts assuaged and tender oaths answered with earnest silence. _Does it hold those secrets still?_

He drew a breath, courage leaving him with its exhalation, his eyes fixed to the floor. He considered, briefly, flight, but then determined that cowardice would not be added to his list of failings this night.

"Algamir, Lómion, Estadion… all dead." His voice creaked as if it had long fallen into disuse. "They are all dead and I could do nothing. Valar forgive me, I have failed them. I have failed."

When first Haldir had appeared before Galion in his armor, it had sparkled with the gleam of his pride, his new rank and accomplishment rendering him the very image of the Strongbow. Now, his head bowed and his shoulders rounded, he looked every inch the master of doom by doom mastered in a glittering costume that reflected in each of its polished plates the abject defeat that hovered about him like an ill fog.

Galion's book fluttered and flapped as it tumbled to the floor, forgotten as he rushed to take the forlorn figure into his arms, pages awkwardly curling beneath the weight of the spine. He pressed a kiss to Haldir's forehead, soft and undemanding, a kiss conferring all his love, covenanting his resignation, mayhap even contentment, to be naught but the trusted companion on this darkest night. But as he withdrew, Haldir's fingers locked tightly around his wrist, staying him. Haldir looked up uncertainly through thick lashes, blue eyes guttering with beleaguered pride, beseeching: _I need... Do not ask me to beg._

He raised his hands to unhook the fibula at his shoulder. Galion caught his cloak as it slipped away and hung it on the back of the door. He moved to stand at Haldir's back, not quite touching him, taking in the musk of leather and neatsfoot oil that did not fully cover the tang of anxious sweat. Unlacing the stiff corselet, he counted to himself (_one, two_) each muted snap of the leather thong as it whipped (_six, seven_) through the grommets, leaving time enough to safely withdraw. _Better it ends ere even beginning than we regret the deed done. _

If Haldir marked his purpose, he did not show it, did not pause while working the buckles of his pauldrons, taking in slow, shallow breaths. He did not even move when Galion receded through the archway into the bedchamber beyond. When, at last, he raised his head, he saw Galion patiently waiting for him and his gaze fell to the healer's outstretched hand. He heard the silent appeal: _Come._

Eyes the color of river stones beckoned; he answered their call. 

* * *

Haldir's fires were slow to be stoked, but his need, when at last aroused, was swift and fierce. Galion traced a warm spiral around the puckered, silvery scar on his chest and Haldir's blood raced to greet the touch, as if his vital spirits were keyed to Galion's fingers, recognizing the hands that had once made that broken flesh whole.

He could hardly bear the kindness of it, as if such tender succor was not his to own, and the thought that he might merely be receiving Galion's pity was unbearable. He kept his eyes closed as he rolled atop his consort, poised on a forearm that did little to distribute his full weight, crushing the healer to the bed. Of a sudden his body had flared from smoking ember to consuming inferno and he ground his hips against Galion's, the ragged, rasping breaths he drew in and forced out of his lungs a savage and immediate wind in Galion's ear. The healer's hands drew down his sides and came to a halt at the small of his back, pulling him tighter, encouraging Haldir rage on and burn out his fires there against him.

When Haldir slowed his feverish rutting, the skin of their bellies slick and glistening, he kept his gaze averted still, unwilling to allow himself to apprehend those river stone eyes lest he was unmanned by all that was reflected back at him.

Yet he could not fathom any other place where he would feel more welcomed, more desired, more beloved, and no other's touch would bring him respite from the tempest of fury and despair that rampaged within him. And so, with eyes closed, he moved aside, and with hands that ordered rather than requested, he rolled the healer to his stomach, gripping a pale thigh below and behind the knee and pushing it up towards Galion's chest. The healer fumbled in his nightstand for a jar of salve that was torn almost viciously from his hand and with no preamble and little gentleness, Haldir spread, probed, opened.

No words of enticement were uttered in a peaked ear, no moans of pleasure rumbled from the depths of a broad chest, no melodious keening reverberated in the chamber; they coupled in silence punctuated only by intermittent gasps and grunts. This was no act of pleasure. This was something feral and desperate, a vehement dispossession of Haldir's soul-blight. With every thrust, Haldir sough to forget his pain, to sink it under the slither of sweat and the scorch of flesh—vital, vibrant flesh—and strike the memory of three cold bodies from his mind, even if only for the duration of this brutal joining.

Barely prepared, Galion gritted his teeth as the onslaught pushed him up the bed, his own ardor wilting under the relentless pounding. But as Haldir's pace faltered, his arm wrapped tight around Galion's waist and Galion covered that arm with his own, felt Haldir's fingers stretching long to reach his, to twine with them, urgently clutching his hand as he pressed his face into Galion's neck. Haldir cried out more in anguish than in pleasure, and the tremors that wracked him long after his release were something other, something harsher, than the aftershocks of climax. Galion held him in silence as Haldir's cool tears dripped on the back of his neck and coursed slowly down the long trail of his spine. 

* * *

The painful conflagration within had been transiently extinguished, but sleep did not come easily to Haldir. He had wanted, and had taken, the only intimacy Galion had ever refused him. How many times, in his long years, had he found himself sunk to the hilt in some warm body only to slip from that berth- and the other's presence- as soon as courtesy and decency allowed (and on more occasions than it pleased him to admit, before even that)? The intoxicating pleasure of the act made him leer with satisfaction; he craved the clutch of his hands on sharp hipbones and the weight of another's legs tossed wantonly over his shoulders, and he sought the taut welcome of an accommodating form eagerly and often.

But never had it felt like this. Even fraught with violent sorrow and lacking any of the trappings of tenderness, even wanting for the susurration of sweet words and the silk of superfluous touches, there was infinite care. Each rough thrust into Galion's body had brought him closer to home, and closer to peace. And when, at last, the undertow of grief swept him into a dark and lonely sea, it was Galion that he clung to, tempest-tossed, and Galion who spoke not a word of censure or condescension as he silently wept, tearful as some stricken maid, but simply held him still and close, moving only once to lift their joined hands and brush a compassionate kiss across Haldir's knuckles, bringing them to rest against his heart, that Haldir might feel the steady comfort of its consistent rhythm against his palm.

Was this what he had willingly forgone when swearing his heart to his office alone? This peace? This deliverance? How could such serenity and devotion ever be thought a bane, even to the most earnest servant of duty? Nay! Indeed, it was this care, this... this _love_... that balmed the afflicted soul and foiled the slow corrosion of despair.

He cursed himself for a lackwit and clung more tightly to the healer, curling his body to mold around Galion's lanky form, feeling the warmth of the healer's back against his chest, seeking the oblivion of sleep with his face half-buried in a sheaf of dark hair scented with herbs and tinctures. To feel those fingers lace with his just as they had done as children was to know solace, for even then, in the little brush-fort with its carpet of moss, it had been Galion who had known his fears and silently, with the barest touch, assuaged them. 

* * *

When the sun rose, it was Haldir, not Galion, left alone in the bed. As the spindly light of dawn matured into the denser gold of morning, Galion eased himself gently from the Marchwarden's clutches, for Haldir's arm had remained an intractable shackle around him all through the night, and made his way to the bath for his morning ablutions. He made ready for his day in the healing houses and still Haldir lingered in blank and dreamless sleep.

It was just as well, he considered, that they might both be spared awkward apologies or explications, the invocation of grief to explain away Haldir's extended presence in his bed. By eventide, he would be gone, and both would simulate forgetfulness until Haldir forgot the event in truth, though Galion never would.

So when faced in twilight's ambient glow with the sight of the Marchwarden pacing anxiously outside his door, Galion froze. Such blatant deviation from the predictable, if painful, order of their affairs threw him off balance.

"Welcome home, friend."

Haldir's face was still clouded with residual grief, though the small smile he wore was warm, if slightly guarded, and Galion wondered at the uncertainty evinced by the pinched set of his features. His heart throbbed rapidly in his chest, like a deer poised for flight.

"I had not thought to see you again so soon."

Haldir's smile edged crookedly up one side of his face, making him appear simultaneously waggish and abashed.

"I was a poor companion for you last night. Bad enough I afflicted you with my tribulations, but I compounded my incivility by chasing relief for myself and offering none to you. I thought..." he paused there, as if to choose his words most delicately. "I hoped you might permit me to rectify my oversight. To...thank you for your care."

Galion's stomach dropped with the sheer cruelty of it. A night of light-hearted pawing was a thing he had learned not only to bear, but to enjoy. One night of intimacy when exigent circumstances demanded was even in his power to manage. But to become just another mount to be ridden as Haldir's whims dictated was beyond all toleration. For certes he had made that point abundantly clear on the occasions when their play had become overly raucous and Haldir's fingers had cleverly quested down and back to wordlessly make his wants known. Each time, Galion had reined him in and met his frustrated look with one of immovable resolve. But the Marchwarden was accustomed to having his demands met, and Galion now had little alternative, if he meant to preserve his heart, but to speak plain.

"I would do anything to comfort you, Haldir. If solace is in my power to give you, I will give it. But I will not lay for you when your interest waxes only to be left cold when it wanes, with naught but a sharp ache and stained sheets for company. There are many who will play the sheath for you gladly and ask no more than a tumble, but I am not of that feather. It is difficult enough to keep my head when we tryst. I tire of waking alone with the taste of you still on my lips."

Haldir flinched at Galion's unhappy reproof; he knew it was well earned. But he pressed on, refusing to show his dismay. Too long he had undervalued what lay right before his eyes, but the past night had unearthed for him the full radiance of this jewel, the inestimable value of the treasure that was Galion, and he could only hope the love that had long been offered and just as long brushed aside would be offered still. He stepped close and closer yet until he could reach up with both hands and curl his fingers around the healer's neck, smoothing the high arch of his cheekbones against the pads of his thumbs, watching the familiar line creasing Galion's brow as he startled back from Haldir's encroaching presence. But Haldir would not let him go. Not this time, nor ever again.

"Then let me stay, _sadron_," he implored, "and taste me anew each morn."

Galion's face darkened momentarily as a cloud of wary disbelief overcast his features, but then the shadows fell away and the flickering light of hope he had long kept buried and silently tended became a blazing beacon, his incandescent smile a lodestar dispelling the fleeting gloom of uncertainty. The healer was radiant in his joy.

Haldir's own face reflected their shared jubilance, and he promised himself that his companion's comely face would never wear that shade of sorrow or mistrust again. 

* * *

Languid strokes now supplanted frenetic displays, and no more did Haldir avert his gaze, but rather looked with wonder at the one to whom he had released his heart. Each gesture was one of caring, the embodiment of this strange new adoration still tinged in sorrow. Despite Haldir's scapegrace grin beneath the darkening sky, this clinch in the downy comfort of Galion's bed—_their_ bed, now- was still driven by his desire for surety rather than lust. Equal import was ascribed to tentative touches and shared breaths as to a molten grind or a long, slow pull of a shaft. This time, when fingers ventured downward, Galion did not intervene in their passage, but threw his leg over Haldir's hip and pushed toward him.

"I would know how best to pleasure you, Galion," Haldir whispered, the earthy timbre of his voice promising all manner of delight as warm lips moved against the healer's pale throat and salve-sleek fingers teased him to readiness. "What is your desire?"

"I want you deep," Galion groaned, and in an instant Haldir was kneeling between his splayed limbs, his eyes glittering with intent.

He lifted one of the healer's legs to his shoulder while the other wrapped reflexively around his waist and locked there as if to cage Haldir and keep him close, and with a slow, inexorable push, Haldir sank deep in the clenching heat, letting his head loll on his neck as he gritted out a ribald imprecation at the sublime feel of it, that warmth beyond all others, his grip on Galion's thighs tightening to the verge of pain.

"Deeper," Galion panted. "Fill me."

Haldir leaned in with all his weight, bearing down into that cinching haven until the healer had taken every turgid inch of him. The deliberate slide of his body set a pace that was devastating in its languor, each slow push and measured withdrawal an exquisite torment to them both. Yet for Galion, more exquisite still was the warmth of Haldir's cheek nuzzling his leg, the caress of his breath against the tender skin behind his knee, and the nip of his teeth there followed by placating kisses. When Haldir's eyes closed this time, it was to lose himself in the sensation of Galion's flesh, not to hold him at bay, and so exquisite he was in that moment, lost to the buck and slip of ecstasy, his muscles shifting beneath his skin, his lips parted and chest heaving, that Galion was primed to spend even before the wide, callused hand began to move along his length in synchrony with the body that rode him, each provocative stroke harrying him to a wild culmination.

Dark hair whipped and tangled against the pillow and Haldir watched surreptitiously through the fringe of his lashes as Galion writhed under his touch, opened to receive him fully, tiny beads of perspiration glistening like a crystal diadem high on his brow. It filled Haldir with grateful awe that he should find both pleasure and comfort, both rapture and care, with one such as this, a dark and peerless beauty who had ever been a friend and brother, and even sometimes a lover, but who now wore a another title: beloved.

"Ai, Haldir!" Galion reared up beneath him, his face flushed. "I am undone!"

"Show me," Haldir gasped, his pace quickening to keep time with Galion. "Let me see you succumb!"

Galion's back arced off the bed as if he would snap his spine with the intensity of his climax. His length throbbed in Haldir's hand and he cried out the full measure of his bliss, ropes of seed shooting across the curve of his chest as his body went rigid. The clench and pulse within pulled Haldir over the edge and he bayed like wolf as his release took him and he drove himself deep into Galion's heat.

Almost giddy in the wake of such an explosive merger, Haldir slipped with no small reluctance out of the healer's body and lowered the Elf's trembling legs to the bed. He leaned down to pluck kisses from Galion's lips before fitting himself to his side. Blue eyes settled then on a bolt of green, and he reached up to tug Brethil's sash off the headboard where Galion had draped it. He pulled it through his fingers, even raised it to his face and sniffed, as a territorial beast might scan for the scent of an interloper.

"The scribe's, I take it?"

Galion nodded, refusing to be rattled by the tensing of Haldir's jaw and the slight narrowing of his eyes that bespoke unanticipated, yet undeniable, jealousy. He reminded himself coolly that he had every right to bestow his favors on anyone he chose.

"A lovely piece," Haldir dismissed with manufactured airiness. "I am sure he will be glad to see it returned to him. Just as I will be glad to see it go."

Bristling at the subtly imperative tone, Galion plucked the silk from Haldir's hands and let it slip to the floor. When he turned back, Haldir's eyes had taken on a strange cast that on any other countenance he would have named pleading. "Why do you look at me thusly?" he cautiously queried.

"I have been a fool." Haldir spoke quietly and in earnest. "I have been granted more tenderness and constancy from you than ever my actions merited. With all I have done and failed to do, might you still have me for your own, Galion? It is your care alone that restores me, undeserving though I am. You have ever been my strength: will you also be my heart?"

And Galion found, once presented with the greatest of all his desires, he could do nothing but stare dumbly as if he had not understood the words. After too long of an interval, he quietly whispered yes.

"Then I am blessed beyond all measure," Haldir smiled softly and kissed him, a slow, sweet kiss. He reached for Galion's hand, and soon, he slept.

But Galion did not sleep; the loamy smell of communion still lay strong on the sheets and hung heady in the air, recalling pleasures exquisite and profound: The memory of Haldir's body filling him, rocking deep, the dulcet crescendo of the Galadhel's voice as he howled his ascendancy. He was swimming in a drowsy gladness he might have imagined impossible, save that Haldir's breathing, a low and rhythmic tide beside him, reminded him of its plausibility—nay, its very existence—with every cresting sigh. Could he have meant his words? Did he really mean to make an offering of his heart, or were these but empty words spoken in the hazy aftermath of pleasure that both would later regret? Even if they were, Galion could not regret feeling the warmth and weight of the body at rest beside him, seeing the long fingers of a rough hand interlaced with his own in what seemed the most intimate gesture of all. 

* * *

**Lothlorien, 2941 Third Age**

The guardians of Lorien were as breathtaking as they were lethal, arrayed for battle and flying their colors high. They formed ranks stretching across the land and prepared for the fray. Before them, another line of warriors stood, though they wore neither helms nor armor. The most ancient and powerful of the Eldar and the Istari had gathered on the withered field, and with the strength of their magic, they would at last expel the Necromancer from his lair. The wardens of the Wood would lay down their lives if the need of the Wise demanded it, and they readied themselves to destroy the yrch and fell creatures that would no doubt be driven into the open once their master had abandoned them to their pitiful fates. Somewhere beyond their purview, King Thranduil and his masterful son rallied their own forces to dispatch the din-horde that sought refuge in their own troubled forest.

The healers waited beneath the eaves where a few archers still perched in the boughs to cover them. Galion had seen Haldir only for the briefest of moments as the guard assembled, his eyes bright with the foretaste of bloodshed, his jaw set like a steel trap and squared with determination, and his carriage bold, as if his very presence announced to any who looked upon him: _Today I will rid my land of Evil's taint!_

"I will return," he had said just before he joined his men. That the words "to you" were left unspoken was of little import, for Haldir knew that Galion's heart had heard them, and had known them true.


	7. Chapter 7

**Lothlorien, 3018 Third Age: Rhîw**

When the fog of sleep had cleared, at least in part, from Galion's eyes, the first thing of which he was aware was that his body hovered perilously close to the edge of the bed. The second thing he noticed was that one paltry corner of linen was all that remained to cover him against the early morning chill. The rest of the blanket, to say nothing of the rest of the bed, had been commandeered by the Marchwarden, ostensibly for the official purpose of warming his official hide.

The fact that this cursed Galadhel and his ridiculous brawn expanded in sleep to fill the space of no less than three Elves might have driven him to distraction over the intervening decades since Haldir had staked his claim on, in, and across Galion's bed, but that he looked so adorably beatific in his quietude.

Yet youthful and untroubled as he appeared, he still threatened to topple Galion from the nest as he sprawled diagonally on his stomach, one knee pulled up as if scaling some steep scarp and one arm dangling limply over the side. With a sigh, Galion took up the task of moving his cumbersome beloved and reclaiming some territory—and some bedding—for himself.

No sooner had he nudged a strapping leg aside with his foot than the heretofore exanimate mass snorted, stirred, and rolled over, pinning the healer beneath the dead weight of an arm and a leg.

"Oh, bother," the healer whispered in fond exasperation. "How you slumber thus I truly cannot fathom."

"Perhaps it is because I do not truly slumber," a rough voice grumbled as the wakening Elf fixed him with half-lidded eyes. "How can I hope for sleep when my beastly bedmate mercilessly kicks me?"

"I did not kick!" Galion protested as his rousing captor began to gnaw playfully on his chest, inching up toward his neck.

"Oh? If you did not kick, what, then?" Haldir tried his best to affect incredulity as he nipped at a fleshy lobe, grinning smugly when Galion purred and turned in his arms, his grey eyes widening slightly as his burgeoning erection met Haldir's and found no trace of sleep at all in that part of him.

Haldir rolled his hips, reveling in the sharp intake of Galion's breath before the healer replied.

"I nudged."

"Ah," the Marchwarden affirmed, reaching between them and taking them both firmly in hand, "you nudged."

Both Elves shuddered at that first touch on eager flesh, Haldir reveling in the lazy tangling of their legs and the little mewls of contentment spilling from his lover's mouth as he drew out their pleasure, rubbing and pulling at a leisurely pace to enjoy the feeling of his blood trilling in his veins, his senses enthralled, his heart poignantly served by this effortless adoration. So many mornings dawned thusly, sometimes playful, sometimes hungry, often tender, and occasionally with one or both of them lingering in half-sleep, the body dabbling in pleasure while the soul rested still. Haldir could scarcely believe that he had once greeted each new day alone; moreover, he could scarcely credit that he had thought himself contented with such an arrangement.

Deep kisses turned slow wakefulness to more urgent ardor. Mewls became growls, sighs became deliciously filthy expressions of desire, ribald promises of exquisite tortures to be exacted upon pliant bodies. Fingers toyed with nipples now standing as erect as the flesh arching up ardently further below, and a disheveled flaxen head broke the sordid serpentine of tongues to hiss a single, scorching word in his darkling beloved's leaf-like ear.

"_Suck_."

Oh, if any Elf had the mettle to contravene the Marchwarden's command, Galion was not he! Holding Haldir's gaze, he prowled down the bed, refusing to relinquish the captain's full attention as he parted his lips and drew his tongue across his teeth with unmistakable intent, feeling vindicated indeed when the unsubtle gesture evoked a shudder of anticipation. He absorbed every nuance of desire that flickered across the Galadhel's face when he descended upon that ardent flesh and did as he was ordered.

Haldir groaned, rewarding the exquisite draw and release with rapturous song. It was a far cry from the days of old when the Marchwarden took his pleasure in near silent detachment. Now he cooed and keened and even, on occasion, emitted the most perfectly devastating yelp when brought to climax that Galion was unsure whether his own body would respond with delighted laughter or lusty snarls.

As he deftly plied his tongue to its task, he reached up and his palm was filled with a little pot of calendula salve. Soon his fingers were delving and twisting in Haldir's core to the same quickening pace he had set upon his shaft. He settled the weight of his body across one of the Marchwarden's powerful legs to subdue the bucking of hips as Haldir spent, surges of bitter heat flooding his mouth.

Eyes agleam with salacious mischief, Galion stalked back up like a feral cat, swiping the last of Haldir's fluid from the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist. His own shaft, primed and aching, swayed heavily between his legs, and he loomed briefly over his companion before swooping down to claim a kiss, letting Haldir taste the tang of his own essence on his tongue.

"I hunger to feel your heat, Haldir," he softly drawled, but immediately felt his consort go still beneath him. "I am not one of your wardens," he cajoled. "It would be no weakness to yield to me."

But Haldir's reluctance persisted, and Galion did not wish to color the sweetness of the morning's romp with misgivings, so he found his pleasure where he had many times before: held between the taut walls of the Marchwarden's sweat-slicked, muscular thighs.

Galion grudgingly accepted that there were certain things Haldir would not yet grant him; his submission, and a binding pledge. He was a patient Elf, and Haldir's constant presence in his bed for nearly a century was proof that patience was in due time rewarded. And with Haldir's head pillowed on his chest, words of love tumbling sleepily from his lips as he sank into a delectable drowse, Galion knew himself already possessed of what he most desired. 

* * *

There was no mistaking that Haldir's soul-burden following the loss of his men had been lifted by Galion's care, and ever after did he seem brighter. Returned in those years at Galion's side was the ready laugh of old, the quick humor long smothered under the portentous cloak of the Marchwarden, as welcome as greening buds after a long winter. He even found he had lost his taste for antagonizing Feredir, and while said Elf was for quite some time dubious of his captain's sincerity- an age of mutual persecution and rivalry could not be set aside in a few decades' time- he eventually managed to blunt his sword when it came to Haldir. And while it was often tempting to poke at an acknowledged sore spot, both Elves managed to treat each other with a degree of respectful patience, if not overt fraternity. For this, Rúmil was pleased beyond all telling, but he wisely said nothing lest bringing attention to their fragile accord bring it likewise crashing down.

Yet for all his felicity, one thing still preyed heavily on Haldir's mind: whether the deepening of his relationship with Galion was wisdom or folly. There was no doubt he loved the healer; in one way or another, he had loved Galion since childhood, and the forging of a romantic alliance merely gave their long-standing devotion a greater depth and breadth, the subtle shadings of an affinity that reached soul-deep. Some nights he woke and simply watched his partner sleep, and in those moments he was so overwhelmed by the rush of devotion and wonder that filled him that it was all he could do not to shake Galion awake and tell him over and over again: _You are my home. You are my heart. _

Often he thought on what sweet bliss it would be to bind himself to Galion, to know the healer forever at his side, to feel the joining of their spirits as well as their bodies. He knew, too, that this was Galion's dearest wish, though the healer never once pressed the issue, just as he refrained from questioning Haldir's reticence to receive the full measure of his ardor. Elemmakil's exhortations, however, were well ingrained and never far from Haldir's mind: _I am derelict in my duties if I weigh my lover's life more heavily than the life of another. Yet how can I not? Love is duty's bane, Haldir. Love is treachery._ And for all the love he bore for Galion, he could not set such weighty words aside.

How many times had he said that he would take no spouse, that duty alone would be his bride? How could he be assured that he would not fail in his charge, as Elemmakil believed the mighty Ecthelion had failed, if he, like the Fountain-Lord, made his lover first in his heart? Were he to take Galion as his bond-mate, he would run the risk of ruin on the field of war—for he knew war was nigh, and Mordor's shadow only growing—if he found himself torn between Galion's safety and the safety of his men. It was for this reason alone that he resisted the potent call to give himself completely, fought the ever increasing urge to know the healer's steel as fully as he had known his silk. This, too, was a remnant of Elemmakil and his lessons, for while his fallen Captain and erstwhile lover had maintained that disdain for the passive place in loving fostered the image of a leader who brooked no surrender, Haldir had eventually gleaned that the real reason Elemmakil would not engage him in intimacy had far more to do with the guarding of his heart, and he had hoped to teach Haldir to likewise guard his own.

So guard it, he did…yet he believed to his core that a life without Galion by his side would be a life half lived, an eternity of loneliness intermittently disrupted by meaningless encounters and the pale hope that his righteousness would suffice to warm his empty heart. It was an untenable idea. But so, too, was the idea of failing in his sworn duty.

His ruminations on this particular day were abruptly terminated by the arrival of a breathless runner rushing into the camp to announce that the sentries had seen riders approaching from the foothills in the West. By the time he rode to the eaves of the hither marches, they were well within sight: two figures in deep grey cloaks on shadow-shaded mounts, each horse matching the other stride for stride. There was little doubt as to the identity of these visitors even ere they drew back their hoods to reveal identical faces with handsome features dulled by fatigue.

"_Mae govannen_, Marchwarden," offered one of the pair with a worn smile as they reached the edge of the wood, though Haldir was not so well acquainted with them to say which.

"Well met, my lords. What errand brings you in such haste?"

"Not a pleasant one," spoke the other twin. "Forgive us if we are not forthcoming, Captain, it is a matter of great import, and meant for your Lord and Lady's ears alone unless they deem otherwise."

Haldir gave a slight bow to acknowledge his understanding. He offered them rest and refreshment, but they partook of little, exhausted though they were, and chose to press their mounts and finish their trek, though it would likely find them arriving at the gates of the city well after dark.

Privately, his mind raced with curiosity as he tried to deduce what message the grey riders carried that required such secrecy. His interest, as it happened, would soon be satisfied: as darkness settled over the borders, a swift came gliding through the wood on her swept-back wings and delivered to him an urgent message from the Lord of the Lorien. Come dawn, he was to make with all due speed to Caras Galadhon. 

* * *

In the great hall high in the mightiest of the mellyrn, his Lord and Lady awaited him, as did the sons of Elrond, looking far more rested but no less solemn than he had last found them. Lord Celeborn bade him sit and then began to speak.

In all of Haldir's long years he had never heard such a tale.

The Ruling Ring of Sauron, thought for millennia to be lost and beyond the reach even of its dark master, had been found, and by no less than a wandering Halfling who knew not of its provenance, though he discerned that it held some strange power. He had kept it for some sixty years before bequeathing it to a young kinsman. But the Ring ever sought to be reunited with its maker, and as Sauron's power grew, so did his awareness of the Ring. The Dark Lord had traced it to the Shire, and the young Halfling, at Mithrandir's behest, had set off with three companions in tow, and with Aragorn Dúnedain, last of the line of Elendil, they had arrived in Imladris with _Úlairi_ in close pursuit.

"And now," Celeborn told him, "the Ring comes to us."

Haldir could not disguise his horror. "My Lord, wherefore does it come to our realm?"

"Peace, Haldir," the first twin counseled. "Our father called a council to determine its fate and 'twas decided that the Halfling in whose possession it came shall deliver it to the fires of Orodruin. Our errand was to forewarn your Lord and Lady of their arrival."

"They?" He looked questioningly to Celeborn, but it was the Lady who spoke, her voice as serene as the first light of dawn.

"The Ringbearer will not be alone on his journey. Elrond's council devised a Fellowship to aid the _Periannath_ in his quest. They will take sanctuary here that we might grant them what aid and strength we may."

Haldir met his Lady's firm yet placid decree with a suant breath that did little to dispel his unease. "When will this 'fellowship' arrive?"

"A fortnight, we believe," the other twin—Elladan? —offered, and Haldir gave him a hard look.

"Evil will follow in their wake." Celeborn crossed the room to stand before him. "You must be prepared for it, but in what guise it will arrive I cannot yet say. Speak not of the Ring to your men, but impress upon them the necessity of extreme vigilance."

"Whatever the Dark Lord sends us, your wardens will be prepared." Haldir rose to his feet and lifted his fist to his heart. Celeborn nodded, one corner of his mouth pulling up almost imperceptibly as he regarded his Marchwarden with restrained pride. The Galadhel was not pleased by the news; this much was patent despite the diplomatic attempt the young one had made to school his dismay. No, Haldir was no more pleased than he himself had been, Celeborn acknowledged, yet there was none he trusted more with the task of safeguarding the woods than Guilin's son, who had, as Elemmakil long ago predicted, surpassed even that great guardian.

_The Golden Wood has a stalwart champion in its Marchwarden._

He dismissed Haldir and watched with empathy in his heart as the warrior departed the room as swiftly as decorum allowed, awash with silent but palpable anger, unable to do aught but nod and promise preparedness for he knew not what.

* * *

Haldir traversed the bridges and walkways that spanned the high places with a heavy step that resounded in the otherwise tranquil air. When he heard a voice behind him calling to him to wait, he spun around irritably, his eyes narrowed and flashing. The sons of Elrond had followed him out of the hall.

"You see now why we could not speak of our mission at the borders."

Haldir could barely restrain his resentment. He jerked his head in either direction to see who was about before he hissed in an impassioned whisper. "I like it not that such a malicious token should come into my woods. Sauron has long beset us with savagery; not even a century has turned since the Wise drove him from Dol Guldur, and already you would have his eye fall on us again!"

The first twin stiffened at the rebuke, his patience chafed. "And we like it not that the Ring has been harbored in our own halls since nigh the dawn of _Firith_!" He checked the rising tone of his voice. "This doom was not of our making, Marchwarden. We are merely messengers here. But if my people can shelter this thing for a season, so can yours! You vent your spleen on us only because you dare not controvert your Lord and Lady's wisdom in this, which is far greater than your own."

"Enough!" cried his brother, stepping between them ere they came to blows, and from this Haldir assumed the arbitrator was Elrohir, who was said to be more moderate in his bearing than the elder son. He appealed to Haldir with an earnest face. "We are none of us eager to have such infamy in our midst, but we have little choice. The Ring must go to Mordor, and a humble _Periannath_ has been charged with the task. One Halfling holds the fate of us all. Surely we must all do everything we can to ensure his success."

Haldir looked from one fair face to the other with a querulous frown. Though he had disliked the sharp tone of his confronter, the words Elladan Peredhel had spoken were true: He was vexed by the thought of the Ring coming to Lorien, but was powerless to speak against its approach. "I am sworn to do my Lord and Lady's bidding," he simply replied, ashamed by his outburst and anxious to end the contentious discussion. He paused to collect himself. "Let us speak of friendlier things. How does Gildor's band? What mischief has my friend Ausir found of late?"

The twins exchanged a look and Haldir's heart flew to his throat. He knew the manner of news such a glance betided. The first twin turned away and pressed his knuckles to his mouth, and Haldir knew in that instant that he was indeed Elladan, for Ausir had often spoken with fondness and mirth of the tricks they played upon each other. He beseeched Elrohir for an answer, though he knew already what the younger twin would tell him.

"Mischief has found him, indeed, Haldir. He is dead."

Elladan abruptly turned and walked ahead some distance from them, looking away, up into the canopy of the trees.

"The wandering company ran afoul of the Black Riders in the North at the end of _Iavas_. The Wraiths were hunting the Halfling, whom Gildor had by chance or by fate met upon the road the night before. They waylaid the Riders, but not before Ausir fell to a Morgul blade."

Haldir stood in solemn silence for some time before his anger percolated once again. "Why did no one tell me? Nigh two seasons he has been gone and I did not ken the loss." Already he could feel tears pricking at the back of his eyes. "He was my friend! Did I not deserve knowledge of this?"

Elrohir reached out and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You were not forgotten, Haldir. Gildor wished to bring the news himself. But the advent of the Ring has thrown the whole of Imladris into a tumult. Father could not spare him to come to you, and Gildor was adamant that you not simply hear of it by rumor, or by a terse note tied to a falcon's leg.

"He knows your pain, friend. It is his own, for he loved Ausir as he loves you: as a son he was not granted."

"And what of Ausir's wife? How does she fare?"

Elrohir looked down, shaking his head mournfully. "Her grief was beyond her bearing. She was delivered to her kin in Mithlond, but she was consumed by the loss."

Elladan returned then, his eyes rimmed in red, and offered Haldir his arm that they might put behind them the harsh words earlier spoken. "Break your fast with us, Haldir, if your men can spare you. Ausir tormented me with many pranks he had not the chance to recount to you. I think he would rather have us think on his roguery than on his end."

Haldir nodded; he knew it was so.

* * *

_It is coming. It has begun._

Events had been foretold in his Lady's Mirror, but he needed no otherworldly prescience to tell him that what had long been restrained was set now into motion: darkness was coming. He could smell it in the air, the slow stench of decay carried on an ill wind. He could feel it seething in the soil, as if the bones of every creature buried beneath the earth would rise up for a reckoning. The waters wept, and the trees sang despair through the nodding of their boughs that he could answer but not assuage.

_Soon._

The appearance of that wretched, misshapen creature Aragorn had dragged through the eaves of these pristine lands had announced that the final chapter of the age would be written anon. Appropriate, the Elf-Lord mused sardonically, that the Ranger would arrive with his vulgar quarry at the Stirring-time, for as the new growth of _Echuir_ was waking, he was waking his own destiny, and with it, the fate of them all. Would the Ranger take up his part? Could that lean and wiry, half-feral looking boy take the name that was long foretold and succeed where all others of his line had failed? Or would the hope of the Dúnedain fail as well?

And now the _gwanûn_ had come with news that the Fellowship and its corrupt burden had taken the first steps of their desperate journey.

The leaves on the trees still showed gilded and green, the magic of Nenya preserving them in everlasting summer, but in his blood, the Lord of the land knew that the fallow desolation of winter was on them, and to him it seemed a fell and fatal time even as the leaves clung brightly to their branches.

_Even she cannot shunt fate forever. In this false season a shadow looms before us colder and bleaker than any season of Ilúvatar's design._

In the grey tunic of the wardens he became invisible, free to slip unseen from the confining walls of Caras Galadhon and into the woods without escort. _What is it_, he wondered with no little bitterness,_which makes them believe a soldier is rendered impotent when he is named a lord?_ He had long ago found that courtiers, advisors, and seneschals alike all labored under the misapprehension that in doffing armor for robes of state, one doffed all strength as well. _I can barely pass water without some sycophant asking if he can assist me._

His mood was surly and dark. He felt fettered.

This night he sought solitude without explanation, some uninterrupted contemplation of the fell deeds to come. Was it not his right as Lord of this place to tour it unimpeded? His only conceit was in knowing he walked with greater stealth than any other, for the ground-fall and tree limbs kept his presence secret, and not a leaf nor a blade of grass would ever betray him. Haldir alone sensed him, but the Marchwarden knew his mind and would not intercept him. The loyal Marchwarden would ever be taciturn where his Lord's business was concerned.

He climbed up to a talan secreted in the furthest heights of a Mallorn near the place where in days long past Amroth's towering lair had overlooked the realm. He eschewed the long ladder to scale the mighty tree branch by branch just to feel its bark against his palms, to feel blood and bone and muscle working in perfect concert. Tonight he needed to remember his strength, for he would need all of it very soon. Evil was coming, and it came not only in the shape of a Ring. He scanned the horizon, scenting the air, hoping that perhaps another of his senses could bring him knowledge of the threat that even his far-sighted eyes could not yet discern. Yes, evil was coming, but Celeborn of Lorien knew not in what form. And he knew not when.


	8. Chapter 8

**Lothlorien, 3018 Third Age: Rhîw**

Haldir broke his fast with the sons of Elrond, but the simple meal soon gave way to talking and the sharing of news, and by the time Haldir left the brethren at their lodgings, the day was nearly spent. He delivered his mount to the stables and decided to pass the night in the garrison and return to his patrol at first light. His thoughts were all of Ausir, bittersweet now, his sorrow at hearing of the Elf's death mingled with pleasure at Elladan's tales of their mutual trickery. Each new plot Elladan unraveled for him made him smile, for every one bore the hallmarks of Ausir's quick wit and creativity. Oh, but the loss! For all his pranks and jests and bawdy songs, he was a stalwart ally and valiant warrior, and now he was no more.

And his wife, Nellas, the one who had charmed his wanton heart with her own laughter and cleverness, gone as well, that gaiety blighted forever beneath a weight of grief too heavy to bear. That was the prize of a marriage-bond: a love so great it brought death to the undying. The binding of souls had not shorn Ausir up, but it had torn Nellas down.

Unable to sleep, he took himself for a walk through the greening slopes near the garrison. He had not gone far when a pale fog began to traipse through the leaf and brush. The mist seemed to arise from everywhere and nowhere, and Haldir stopped dead in his tracks to watch its evanescent dance. He had no fear yet, just a dull sense of disquiet, but as he felt no immediate threat, he carefully continued down the path, squinting to see through the veil hanging fine as a spider's web before him. Soon, he knew, he would step into a clearing, and then take the left-hand path circling back around to the archery lists. However, his steps lead him not to the anticipated places, but rather to a set of stone steps clothed in pale lichens and moss.

A cautious and curious tread brought him down the long stairs and all at once, the vapor dissipated, rose up into the trees and vanished, and Haldir saw where he was, and what stood before him.

The Mirror of Galadriel.

Only once in all his years had he stood here, in the sacred grove. That night, he had given fealty to his land, to his Lord and his Lady, and spilled his blood upon the ground to seal his oath. He had known then that the way to this place would only be made known to one who had been bidden to come there, but he had received no summons.

The grass in the dell was the preternatural green of eternal spring, as if each blade pushed anew through the loamy soil and stretched to salute the sun each morn; in the crevices of the low rock wall which edged the clearing flourished niphredil and elanor, and rarer blooms which unfurled their ethereal pennants only in the cool shade of night. The air teemed with life, as if spirits gathered in the eerie glade patiently abiding their moment to speak. The song of the stream tumbling down from the fountain atop the hill alternately lulled and mocked, for it was the medium through which the Mirror spoke, and it had many secrets to reveal. Haldir had never thought to distrust water until now, but something in its laughing, placid tune seemed almost cruel.

"Welcome, Haldir."

He startled at the voice, unaware that he was not alone, but as his Lady approached, passing tall and straight through the high green hedge, he sank to one knee and bowed his head.

_Rise, my guardian. _

This time, the words brushed softly through his mind. When Haldir stood, he saw that her golden tresses were unbound, falling in undulating waves that reached nearly to her feet. Her shift was plain and ungirded and her feet were bare. This was not the mannered Elf-Queen to whom he had sworn his oath; this was the embodiment of living light, of Anor and Ithil, of Laurelin and Telperion. Her eyes flickered with a glimmering more ancient than the stars. Her radiance cowed him.

"What would you have of me, my Lady?"

"The Mirror called you here, not I. Will you look?" She poured from a swan-necked ewer till the shallow basin brimmed and gently blew across the surface, the water swirling translucent as mithril under her breath.

"If you wish it."

"It is not for me to decide."

He did not want to look; he feared the Mirror, and held out little hope that it would show him aught but horror. But it called to him, enticed him with an irresistible force. He could no more have turned from it than he could have plucked his dagger from its sheath and plunged it into his own heart. With trepid yet inexorable steps, he drew toward the pedestal.

When he had seen all that it would show him, he pulled hastily away as though throwing off unseen tethers and stumbled gracelessly backward. He sank silently to the ground, and he wept. 

* * *

The remaining week of Haldir's tour stretched out before him like the terrain of a dream, alien and uncomfortable, the requirements of his patrol barely keeping him moored to the waking world. The men noticed that their Marchwarden was distant and preoccupied, did not join them for their meals and spoke little to them beyond issuing orders, but none dared comment on it.

When he returned from the borders, he did not return home. He set himself up in the Captain's quarters within the barracks, surrounding himself with the small but tangible remembrances of sacrifice and loss: Tathalion's armor, relinquished when he quit the land; Elemmakil's log book; a map of the western border and Hithaeglir inked in his father's fine hand.

It was not unusual for Haldir to be delayed after his return from the marches; the more prosaic aspects of his position clamored for his attention, and a day or two might be spent putting schedules and reports in order. However, when three days had come and gone with no sign of him, nor any word of when he might come home, Galion took it upon himself to seek out his absent consort.

Stepping into the barracks, he saw the narrow cot had been slept in, Haldir's pack disassembled as if he planned to sojourn there a while longer. The healer's expression hovered between irritation and concern and he waited with foundering equanimity for Haldir's explanation before determining which course his emotions would follow. Haldir did not look up from his desk when Galion came into the room, a fact the healer noticed with a growing ache in his chest.

"When you did not come, I worried. You might have at least sent word that you would be detained here."

"Forgive me," Haldir said remotely, still not looking at the healer. "Events have come to my attention…I…I need a few days more, Galion. I will come to you as I am able."

Galion's heart sank like a stone, accompanied by the distinct feeling that a cold, invisible hand had plunged into his gut and twisted it tight.

"Of course," he said, striving for an affable tone and no doubt failing. "Was there trouble on the borders? We had not heard of any casualties."

When Haldir gave only a half-hearted shake of his head in response, Galion circumspectly approached, and after a moment's consideration, he moved behind Haldir's chair and laid his hands on the Marchwarden's shoulders, his touch radiating the calming warmth of his healer-self rather than the sensual intent of a paramour, but all the same, Haldir's back stiffened under his ministrations rather than relaxed, as if Galion's touch repulsed him, and he quickly pulled his hands away, feeling hurt and vaguely ill. His presence here was not only unwanted, it was disturbing, and this saddened him profoundly.

"I will wait for you at home, then," he finished falteringly, and with foreboding in his heart, he turned away.

Haldir nodded but did not watch him leave. The very touch of those hands which had brought him to soaring heights of pleasure and offered tender comfort beyond compare had nearly broken him to pieces. One look into those grey eyes, one glimpse of the love present in their depths, and he would have been lost forever.

He sat rigid at his desk, even though his back ached and he longed for bed. He did not even undress for sleep. He saw no point to the effort. 

* * *

Two days passed, and then two more. A sennight crept slowly by before Haldir arrived home to find Galion wearing a hunted look. The healer's graceful, feline movements had vanished in the wake of his confusion and anxiety and he flitted nervously as a sparrow, agitated and uncomfortable in his own chambers. Haldir was ashamed to see the ill effects he had wrought even in his absence.

Galion wasted no time in seeking the core of the matter. His questions were so simple and direct that no room was left for evasion or deflection. Haldir took a deep breath and began.

"I did not come home to you, Galion, because you will despise the message I bring."

"Give me your message, then," Galion said sharply. "I have been patient, and I am frayed at the edges from waiting."

"I told you when we spoke that events had come to my attention." Haldir kept his voice steady and even. "Those events have forced me to make a choice. It is a choice that destroys me utterly."

Galion paled. "What event is this that threatens you so? What choice have you been forced to make?"

Haldir could not meet his eyes. Already he had espied the ache of recognition within those shining orbs, as if Galion had gleaned the tale as yet untold. "I have loved you too much, Galion. I have seen the future of our union and it is disastrous."

Flailing blindly with one hand until he found the back of a chair to steady himself, Galion lowered himself to the seat, fixing his eyes to the floor, looking as if he might at any moment bend over and retch.

"What are you saying? Speak plain, Haldir! What do you mean?"

Haldir swallowed hard against the rising tide of acid scaling his throat. "I cannot stay here with you."

"Please tell me you jest!" Galion's face was a paling landscape of confusion and disbelief. "Tell me you would not hurt me so."

"I cannot!" Haldir cried, the sound of his voice like a wounded beast. "Think you this causes me no pain? I loathe every word of this dispatch and yet I have no choice but to deliver it!"

Galion's eyes brimmed with tears of unfathomable and utterly unexpected betrayal. The ballast of a siege engine plunging through the roof of their _talan_ might have come as a lesser shock and done him lesser harm. "But why?" he implored. "What have I ever done but love you? What disaster looms that you fear so, and what is my role in it? Only tell me that and I will strive to prevent this doom in any way!"

"I have looked into the Lady's Mirror, and it showed me what would come to pass if I claimed you as my own. I will come to ruin. I will come to ruin, and my love for you will turn to hate."

Haldir sat on the couch, turning away from his lover's miserable face, and retold in a wrenched voice the full tale of his horrifying revelation. When he had finished, he peered out of the corner of his eye, cautiously seeking Galion's reaction. The healer was vehemently shaking his head, still as white as a ghost.

"Nay. You are wrong, Haldir," he adamantly proclaimed. "This could not have been the message. Even the Lady has said that the Mirror speaks in riddles, and that visions it gives are often only things that might be. Would you destroy our union over a mere reflection of things which may never come to pass?" His voice rose in desperation.

"I have told you what I have seen! I saw nothing but destruction and bloodshed and my own failures! I have thought on nothing else for all these weeks, Galion. I have sought any other explanation and I have found none. Do you not think I would spare you—spare _us_—if there were any way? But there is no way to spare us. I will not have you share responsibility for a death I could neither forgive nor forget…" He choked back an anguished noise, the atrocity of the oracle returning to him with vicious clarity.

"You put all your faith in a spectre, but none in me." Galion's voice was hollow, and he looked to Haldir like a lost child. No longer a beacon of hope and succor, no longer a strong body ready to give aid, or the virile lover with limbs and hands that thrummed with elemental energy. He looked young, and powerless, and bereft.

"Please, Galion… if I could see any other path, I would take it. Please know I have loved you, for I have! Eru blind me, but I have!"

"Do not speak those words!" Galion cried. "You have played me false with those idle declarations if you can so easily now withdraw them. Better they had never been spoken at all than wielded now as the cudgel that breaks me."

"I was never false, Galion!" Haldir's voice had gone hoarse. "You had my heart, all of it!" He did; for Haldir could feel it breaking even as he whispered: "You have it still."

A snide laugh sliced the air. "I suppose I ought be grateful that you allowed me to tarry with it as long as you did. Is that to be my consolation, then? That you let me linger with the illusion of your infinite care a while?"

Haldir steeled himself against the backlash. No loss had ever felled him quite so keenly. Each word from his own lips was a sword-blow aimed to take down the one he most loved; where was the justice in this? A part of his mind screamed for silence, begged of himself to curtail this mad scene and throw himself into Galion's arms, to beg him for understanding and forgiveness and to take back every word he had spoken. No task had ever been so devastating or so difficult. And at the last, he looked away and owned himself a coward: he could no longer bear to witness the pain in Galion's eyes, pain that he himself had put there.

_End this_, he told himself, as much for his own sake as for Galion's.

"I have maintained from the first that I would not marry," he pronounced tonelessly. "You know this, Galion. We have never spoken otherwise."

"And yet today you admit you have considered it!" the wounded healer shot back.

"I considered it, and I was shown the consequences of it. It cannot be. This is my fate: to be alone."

"But you would make it my fate as well!" Galion rose on shaking legs and crossed to Haldir with almost timid steps, his final stand. Once near, his voice fell to a whisper. "I disavow it. I will not accept this fate!"

Haldir's response was just as quiet, just as solemn. "It is done, Galion. Know that I have loved you but I must release your heart. Perhaps in time, you will understand. You will know that I do this not to hurt you, but because it is the only thing I can do to circumvent a death I could not bear to carry. And perhaps, when you understand, you will think fondly of me again, for I am loath to lose your friendship as well as your love." He reached out for his fair one, feeling the loss even now as if a frost were creeping through his veins, his fingertips just barely glancing off Galion's shoulder.

Galion recoiled from the touch and lurched backward, looking at Haldir in outraged stupefaction. "No! No more!"

He crossed the room back and forth with violent strides and nearing Haldir, turned on him abruptly, his arm poised to strike a punishing blow. But with great effort he stayed his fist, jerking his hands harshly through his dark hair with fingers curled like talons. "Know this, Haldir," he growled, "break with me now and you sunder all ties. If you would kill the love between us, then you must kill it entirely. I will not let my heart fester because you wish to salve your conscience with my friendship!"

"Tell me you know that I loved you, Galion!" Haldir felt the last vestiges of his control rapidly slipping and he lunged forward toward the healer who deftly avoided his advance. "Tell me you understand that I have no choice in this!"

"Go!" Galion roared. "Get thee from my sight!"

His eyes were dead and cold and flat as slate. In all his days Haldir had never seen him levy a look so devoid of kindness, so full of stark fury and disgust, on any living creature. Least of all him. It was a glare like a dagger, a weapon Haldir never imagined Galion possessed, and to watch him wield it knowing he alone had put it in Galion's hand was the bitterest blow of all. He felt keenly the pain of his heart being gouged from his chest by the vitriol in those eyes as surely as if the healer carved it out of his flesh in truth. But he knew Galion's misery was greater still, and that he was its sole cause.

_This is what I do… it is what I am: I wound, and I maim, I destroy._

Galion's voice was barely audible this time, but no less absolute.

"Leave me. Go." 

* * *

In the dead of night, the Marchwarden woke with a sudden start, tossing his blankets and throwing his legs over the side of the cot as if he would bolt, but no matter how fast he flew, he could not outrun the fate shown to him in the Mirror, and no matter how harshly he rubbed his raw, red eyes, he could still not divest them of the horrors that blazed over and over again in his dreams:

The black tower of Barad-dûr rising like a menacing fist from the wasted soil of Amon Lanc; the soul-rending shriek of a Nazgûl, the membranous wings of its fetid mount spreading in flight to occlude a pale, bloated moon.

Mighty arbalests of the black forces with fiery loads turned loose against the Wood, and wave upon wave of Yrch teeming toward the forest.

His land in flames, a mighty and impassable wall of heat and destruction rising from the forest floor, and a scream so terrible he shuddered to recall it: the sound of death.

Galion. His beloved calling his name over and over, each time with increasing desperation. Haldir with no other thought in his mind than to find him, to save him. He thought not of his men, not of his duty, only of Galion.

He did not know, in the hazy and strangely shifting waters of the vision, what made him turn back in that last moment, but when he did, he saw Rúmil plummeting from his perch, his descent seeming to stretch on and on. He toppled slowly and without sound, only the peculiarly protracted noise of breaking branches telling of his fall, and the sickening thud of his body meeting the ground. And then the beasts were upon him. Not Yrch, but something larger and more man-like. Something fiercer. They circled slowly and inexorably 'round his injured brother with their knives and their teeth, and he heard Rúmil groan and grind out his name through the pain of broken bones. But when Galion called, Haldir could do naught but heed him. The pull of their bond took him in thrall and against its tide he was powerless. Powerless to go to Rúmil. Powerless to save him. The knives of the beasts fell. Rúmil screamed. Again. And again. And again.

And then there was silence. Cold, black, impenetrable silence.

"You know now what you must do," the Lady had softly exhorted as he went to his knees in the glade. Her hand lit lightly on his head but he felt her power in its touch. "You know now what your heart demands."

Haldir had nodded without a word. He knew. He would not bind himself to Galion. Better his heart broken and the long years of his life consigned to bitter loneliness than to be faced with the choice between his beloved's life and his brother's death.


	9. Chapter 9

**Third Age 3019: 47 ****_Rhîw_**

Haldir's temper was at its limit. He had kept unceasing vigil at the borders for weeks without rest, and with every passing day, a feeling of malevolence grew, as if a impenetrable gloom stole up on the marches and waited, waited for only a moment's weakness to slip past his guard and take hold like a blight on a mighty elm, poised to creep through the bark and rot it out from the core. Even the flicker of Anor's rays shimmering through the Mallorn leaves and suffusing the mossy carpet of the forest floor with warmth, or the dance of light from the sickle moon casting sinuous silhouettes against the smooth bark of beech and birch did little to diminish the foreboding that grew in his heart. When word at last reached him that the strange brotherhood was in sight of the hithermost guard, Haldir felt as though the mechanisms of fate had at last been set to spinning, and that doom would come to him, come to all of them, quickly and without mercy.

The Marchwarden had been in a state of perpetual surliness since his return to the borders. He barked his orders sharply or else brooded in silence. His men, however, were fierce in their allegiance, and if they suspected some rift in his personal affairs (for few beyond the tight circle of Haldir's brothers and his most intimate familiars knew of the sundering of his ties to Galion) they spread no tales. Had he possessed the eyes to see it, the Marchwarden might have taken note of the silent but telling looks many of his wardens cast his way, looks which said "Tell us what we might do for you, Captain…we are at your service." Though his demeanor was often unpleasant in these days, he had built up a store of devotion and respect in the minds of his men over the many long years they had served beneath him, and they gave their beloved Marchwarden much latitude.

Which was fortunate, to say the least, because when Haldir's wardens took note of a particular member of the approaching band, they knew full well the welcome their Captain would provide would be a frosty one, even by insular Lórien 's standards. They exchanged glances amongst themselves, speculating on how the Marchwarden would respond to this visitor, and if they expected to see their Captain rise to the occasion in all his haughty grandeur, to see the cold steel beneath his silky voice he reserved only for the most ignominious or unruly interlopers, they were not disappointed. Slowly, he drew himself up to his full and impressive height, his shoulders falling down and back to show off the broad musculature of his chest, and he sighted down his nose at the unwanted guests as if down the shaft of an arrow. He was in fine form this night; only a fool or a lunatic would trifle with this Elf.

Haldir's face, however, was disconsolate rather than bellicose. When he set eyes upon the Fellowship for the first time, a wave of despondence washed over him, for a sad and ragged band they were: Two filthy Men, four Halflings clearly weary to the bone, and one foul little Dwarf. Only the Elf who walked at the fore seemed none the worse for wear. Haldir knew at a glance that this was Thranduil's son, Legolas, for he looked much like the Mirkwood king as Haldir had remembered him. Not that his royal blood would spare him any of the hardships of this ill-starred journey. His voice had called to the Galadhrim across the Nimrodel, singing the song of the lost maiden of that stream, and his sweet tenor made even the clumsy Westron translation lilt as gracefully as his native tongue.

_Evil steals into our home carried on the song of a kinsman. I would never have imagined it so. These are the ones who hold our fates? Elrond the Wise has entrusted our lives with this shabby band? Hope indeed has fled._

At his signal, the wardens encircled their slow-moving quarry from the trees. And though they had not yet been noticed, they took no great pains to hide themselves for they knew that none would dare fire upon them, and it was the Marchwarden's wish that their number be seen, and that they walkers be greeted by the gleaming points of a dozen Lórien arrows.

When Thranduil's son, looking almost gladdened as he eyed with reverent wonder the Mallorn in which Haldir stood, leapt to grasp its lowest branch, Haldir gave a brief nod, and twelve bows were in unison drawn.

"_Daro_!"

The report of his words thundered back from the trees and the Elf flattened himself against the bole and bade his friends be silent and still. Looking down into the pained and weary eyes of his Mirkwood cousin, eyes silently begging a moment's reprieve from terror and enmity, Haldir was ashamed by the malicious glee he had gained from this petty torment, but did little to restrain himself.

"Your friends breathe so loudly we could have shot them in the dark."

He watched with a sneer as Legolas relayed the message to his company and the Halflings cowered, one of them clapping his hands over his mouth, eyes frightened and round.

Perhaps some other time he might have delivered his words with a hint of mirth and without unkindness, but not this night. He drawled icily and there was no warmth at all in his stare, just a shining, angry void. He could not prevent the Fellowship from entering his land, for his Lady had decreed that they would be not merely welcomed, but succored. But while he could not hinder their journey, he felt no compunction to make it an easy one, and if sharp words and cruel japes were the only weapons at his disposal this night—for though his fingers itched for the burn of a bowstring pulled taut beneath them, or the familiar grip of leather on his sword, he had been rendered by the Lady's edict as toothless against them as a suckling pup—well, then, the blade of his tongue would simply have to suffice.

"Bring me the Ringbearer," he demanded of Legolas, "for we have heard tell of him." The Elf did not flinch at the hardness of his stare, but assisted the Halfling up to the _talan_. Care-worn and frail-looking, with dark circles beneath his eyes that spoke as much to a weariness of the soul and the shadows of grief as to lack of sleep, Frodo Baggins squinted and blinked against the piercing glow of the lantern beam. Haldir could not see Ring and imagined it tucked away beneath his dirty vestments, hanging over the heart of this creature who should never have had to bear it. He remembered the archers of the Shire, remembered Bucca and his proud salute as he stood by with the bodies of his dead in the aftermath of Fornost. They were a hardy folk, and pure of heart. But even the most guileless could be corrupted by such base power, could they not? No, this did not sit well with him, not at all.

He felt uneasy in the presence of this tiny creature, and slightly ill. He had sworn to protect this realm, with his own life if necessary, and yet here was death and destruction come to his woods in the form of a weary Halfling and his cursed Ring. Each day of his life was spent in keeping evil in all its forms at bay, and yet here was evil arrived by his Lady's own invitation. How could he be expected to simply stand down and allow this debased creation to be delivered on the very paths, through the very dells, he was sworn to defend?

_Turn them back_, a vengeful voice within him raged. _Send them running and let them take their poison token elsewhere! Let not this wickedness pass through the borders of the realm!_

In ancient Gondolin, the warden of the Gate of Wood had looked down at Tuor and Voronwë and had thought upon his orders to capture or kill any who approached the way to the Hidden City. An old friendship had insinuated its way between Elemmakil and the law: he could follow his orders and rue the imprisonment of a familiar and the death of his mortal companion, or he could give them entry to the passageway and rue his own dereliction of duty. Neither choice sat lightly on his soul. With a sharp pang, Haldir found himself recalling Elemmakil's words, as he did so often in times when his resolution was in doubt, when the cloak of duty fell most heavily on his shoulders.

_Perhaps in imagining that my actions could have altered that doom,_ Elemmakil had in days long past intoned, _I was simply pretending I was more than just a leaf carried helplessly on fate's currents._

As if to punctuate the phantom words, a gust of wind passed them over, the fallow gold leaves of the Mallorn dancing on their branches. _I may be but a leaf carried on fate's currents_, Haldir considered with heavy resignation, _but I am not helpless. My part in this tale has not yet come._

"_Mae govannen_," he said in his own tongue; and then, "Welcome." 

* * *

There was no sleep for the Marchwarden or his men that night. A company of a hundred Yrch or more had breached the borders, coming far too close to where the Fellowship had encamped, and with them came a strange and bent-backed creature Haldir could not identify but dared not shoot. He would not risk battle. Not with so few wardens; not with the Ring so close. He and his brothers had gone deeper into the woods and begun to banter loudly with one another, the sound of their voices luring their foes off the road and into the dark heart of the woods. Orophin had flown on to spread a warning, and Haldir felt certain that no enemy would remain ere long to leave Lórien alive.

At daybreak, Haldir and Rúmil led the walkers through the woods, though it pleased Haldir little to keep so long in the company of a Dwarf, and less to keep so long in the company of the Ring. He could feel the steady thrum of Nenya's magic and it seemed increased, as if the Ring of Water struggled against the poison that walked at his side. At the Celebrant, he whistled a signal and Taurnil stepped out from the cover of the brush to catch the coils of hithlain rope he threw across the river. Slowly and with great difficulty did the Halflings and the Dwarf make their way across, and as Frodo of the Shire moved cautiously over the lines, the Marchwarden did not breathe. Should the Halfling lose his footing on the slender ropes, should a sweaty hand slip from its hold, he would fall into the Celebrant and be pulled away down to the Anduin, and from thence out to the mighty sea, the Ring passing with him. Haldir's fingers curled into fists as he willed himself to perfect stillness lest his baser instinct to see the Hobbit and his burden washed far and fast from Lórien prevail. He felt the eyes of Legolas and Rúmil on him, both watching him with misgivings: Legolas because he knew little of Haldir, and Rúmil because he knew much. When the Ringbearer had set foot on the far bank, Legolas released the Marchwarden from his gaze and darted nimbly across. Rúmil continued to observe him, however, and Haldir shot him a bearish look before he, too, passed over, leaving his brother behind him to gather the ropes.

On the bank, he reminded Legolas of the compromise struck the night before wherein the Dwarf would gain entrance to the Naith only with his eyes bound shut. The Dwarf, upon hearing of the accord made without his knowledge or consent, grew obstinate, as did the Marchwarden, who twisted the blindfold in his hands, silently pondering what excuse he might offer the Lady when his hands accidentally slipped while binding the cloth 'round the stunted one's eyes and garroted him. Even at the Dúnedan's behest the affronted Dwarf would not relent, but announced he would abandon his purpose and make for his own lands.

"You cannot go back," Haldir told him, the menace plain in the precise and even delivery of his words. "You cannot cross the rivers again, and behind you now there are secret sentinels that you cannot pass." At this, the Dwarf straightened his stance and curled his lip as if imagining Haldir's words to be challenge. Haldir merely turned his head to stare down the Dwarf as if he were sighting prey.

"You would be slain before you saw them."

The Dwarf growled and pulled his axe from his belt. In unison, Haldir and Taurnil drew back their bows.

"A plague on Dwarves and their stiff necks," Legolas muttered, though he did not intervene.

Aragorn cursed loudly and stepped between them, looking at them both in appeal as he announced that the matter would be settled by the whole of the Fellowship walking blind. It was now Legolas's turn to cry foul, the only time that the Mirkwood Prince had demonstrated even the smallest portion of princely pique.

"I am an Elf and a kinsman here!"

Aragorn whipped his head around and snapped at Legolas sharply and with great exasperation, "Then let us cry: 'a plague on the stiff necks of Elves' and have done with it!"

Both Legolas and the Dwarf looked suitably repentant when Haldir and Taurnil bound their eyes, and they walked until nightfall and again the next morn without incident. Near Cerin Amroth, Haldir saw Feredir's patrol moving quickly toward them. Feredir brought news: his company had taken down most of the Yrch Haldir had seen two nights prior, but a few escaped and fled to Moria. He was taking a portion of his men to the North lest they returned from Moria in greater number.

"I have word from the Lord and Lady as well," he told Haldir, and Haldir found he did not like the smirking look in his law-brother's eyes. "They await you in Caras Galadhon and it would seem your wards are to walk freely now, even the Dwarf." His lips turned up archly, unable to resist a delicious jab. "She bids the Marchwarden apologize and play nicely with his new friend."

Haldir snorted derisively and Feredir laughed, clapping him on the back before he walked on with his men. He turned to look at the Dwarf, who sat beneath a tree in lively discussion with Legolas. Though it pleased him not to allow these strangers to look upon the secrets of his land, even he had to admit the sight of Elf and Dwarf in easy amity almost gave him hope.

Almost. 

* * *

**Third Age 3019: 6 ****_Echuir_**

"Marchwarden, walk with me."

Turning away from the pavilion where the Fellowship had been housed these past weeks, Haldir flicked his gaze up briefly into the tree where Orophin returned an imperceptible nod. Since the company's arrival in City of Trees, they had been housed in comfortable quarters with ample amenities that they might shore up their hearts and bodies for the rigors that awaited them outside Lórien's borders. But though they had been accorded every courtesy, the Elf-Lord and his Marchwarden took no chances, and while Haldir served as an ever-present and highly visible reminder to the walkers that the Galadhrim would brook no evil action in their woods, his brother was one of many who watched in secret, bows in hand, prepared to act should the Ring exert its baleful influence. Neither the Halflings nor the Dwarf took notice, nor did the man of Gondor, though he remained diffident, suspicious of the Elves and their hospitality. Legolas and Aragorn, however were quite conscious of the surveillance; of that he was certain, though neither the Elf nor the Dúnedan spoke of it.

Celeborn had not waited for him, but walked steadily into the woods where no path lay, just the roll and twine of green brush on which his footfalls were eiderdown-light. Haldir rushed to catch up to him, but once at his shoulder the Elf-Lord did not acknowledge his presence for some time.

They stood in a dense copse, the shade interrupted here and there by the dappling of sunlight that pushed irrepressibly through the leaves, revealing myriad shades of green and gold and brown. Celeborn turned to regard the concerned soldier, his eyes searching Haldir's face intently. His own face was drawn; thrawn deeds were afoot.

"Do you remember, Marchwarden, the oath you made when you took your office? Do you recall the words you freely spoke to me on that night?"

Haldir nodded solemnly. "Aye, my Lord. They are the words I live by. I named my sword for Lórien, and swore to protect this land, even unto my own death."

"And in my Lady's grove, you spilled your blood to seal that oath. You recall the penalty should you foreswear it."

"The penalty is death."

Celeborn turned away and reached out for the withy branch of a young ash, caressing it like a father touches his child, gauging its strength and praising its growth. He did not look at Haldir when he spoke again.

"Are you fully prepared to make good on your oath? For what I would ask of you will test you to the utmost of its bounds."

A sudden and strange frisson raced down his spine, setting every hair on his body on edge, but he did not hesitate with his answer. "Whatever you ask of me, my Lord, it will be done."

Celeborn rounded on him then with singular vehemence. "Would you become a kinslayer, Haldir? Would you destroy one of your own if it was demanded? Answer truthfully, Haldir. I must know."

He looked down at the Marchwarden from his imposing height, and Haldir felt himself in the presence of a fearsome force. A luminous aura radiated from deep within him, bringing Haldir in mind of the mighty Glorfindel. Unlike the Elf-Lord of Gondolin or the Lady of Lórien, Celeborn had not looked upon the light of the Two Trees, but rather seemed to have absorbed the light and life of all green things on the Hither Shores and their energy swirled and swelled within him as vitally as any mythic leaf or root of Aman. Though his face was forever ageless and fair, a glimpse of him now would leave no doubt in the mind of any who saw him that he was a creature both ancient and powerful, fell and majestic, and one who expected no less of his subordinates than he himself would give.

Yet all the same, at the very sound of that word, _kinslayer_, as sharp-edged and hideous as any syllable in the Black Tongue, Haldir's mind reeled. What did his Lord foresee that would require him to test his oath in this way? And more to the point, if this was, indeed, what he was called upon to do, to doom himself to ostracism from all his kin and the wrath of the Valar, could he do it? Given the choice between the ultimate crime and the ultimate failure, how would he choose?

Celeborn did not yet demand his answer, but spoke in low tones. "Tonight, my Lady will take the Halfling to the Mirror. I fear that once he sees the full measure of the enemy aligned against him, he will lose heart. He will offer Galadriel the Ring."

Haldir felt suddenly cold. "The Lady is powerful and wise. Surely she would not claim it! Has her strength waned in some way, that you fear her vulnerable to it?"

The Elf-Lord knelt and the frond of a new fern unfurled itself against his palm, stretching lovingly against the heat of his hand.

"I believe your mother had kin in Doriath, yes? Her brothers—your uncles—were slain there, as were many of my own kinsmen, and my King. I fought the _Naugrim_ who brought down Elwë Singollo, just as I fought the Sons of Fëanor when they, too, came to wreak havoc upon our realm. All for the lust inspired by a fair gem wrought by Elven hands. If the work of one Elf, who had no designs on evil when he forged his stones, could inspire so many deaths, imagine, Haldir, what that Ring might do, that was forged by the purest force of Evil for the singular task of domination."

His wise blue eyes slowly closed against the vibrant, violent memories of Doriath, and against the visions of his worst fears.

"It will test her, this Ring. I have faith she will resist its call." He gave the fern a parting caress and rose again to his feet, looking Haldir hard in the eye. "Yet sometimes faith is not enough. I will leave no room for failure in this."

Slowly, sickeningly, comprehension dawned on the Marchwarden. "You would have me bring down the Lady."

"If she must fall, I want it to be by my hand. But if I falter… if I cannot… all is lost."

When Haldir remained silent, Celeborn grasped him by the shoulders and held him tight, fingers digging into his flesh to the point of pain. "Think you that she would prefer perpetual thralldom to darkness over a swift death? If this must come to pass, it will be a kindness." His eyes shone bright with tears that only lingered in his pellucid orbs, but would not fall. "It would be the last act of love I could perform for her."

Suddenly, his own sacrifice, his own loss of the one he loved, seemed a pale and hollow thing. For though two hearts had been shattered in their sundering, the mercy blow Haldir had delivered to Galion had not taken his life. He looked at his Liege-Lord with eyes evincing great sorrow and even greater respect.

"If you ask this of me, My Lord, I will see it done." 

* * *

Brethil knocked gently at Galion's door and greeted him with an apologetic look. The healer returned a dismissive wave before sinking to the couch with a morose sigh, his long fingers kneading his temples.

"I am sorry, Galion."

Galion shook his head and pursed his lips. "Let us not speak of it. The pain is sharp enough without my pride being piqued with each retelling."

"I have no wish to pique your pride," Brethil consoled in his buttery tones, "and I came not to discuss such matters in any case, but rather to speak of more pressing concerns. The Lord and Lady fear for the safety of Lórien. They are asking those who live outside the great city remove with their families to Caras Galadhon that they might be safe behind the walls, though they will not force the unwilling to abandon their dwellings without. Soon the gates to the city will be closed, the bridges over the fosse dismantled, and the city will become a citadel.

"This does not bode well, friend. If the Lord and Lady fear the oncoming darkness, surely we are beyond hope. Some have talked of leaving these shores, for we know the ages of our kind draw to a close and the sea will soon call us home. I have listened to their talk and I agree—my time here is finished. I will be leaving with the others who plan to venture to the Havens and sail to the West."

"And you would have me join you."

"Only if you wish it. I come merely to apprise you that should you wish to leave, you need not travel alone."

Galion dragged his fingers roughly through his hair and surveyed his quarters dispassionately. Comfort was no longer found here, nor joy, nor even much sleep. Decades of Haldir's presence here had left their mark far more indelibly than centuries of his absence; for as briefly as it had been _their_ home, knowledge that it _had_ been their home rendered it impossible for it to ever again feel like his alone.

What reason was there, really, to stay?

"There will be no need of scribes when history has ceased to be written," Brethil continued, his usually melodious voice sounding flat and tight as he gave utterance to the hopelessness so many of their people shared in these uncertain hours. "There will be no need for healers when all are dead or lost to darkness. A life free of war and death awaits us in the Undying Lands; I, for one, relish the thought of it."

"Perhaps we have no need of scribes, but there will be great need for healers in the days to come!" The rebuke rang sharply from the doorway where Taurnil stood, looking distraught. He eyed Brethil in irritation and strode further into the room.

"You cannot mean to abandon us! The wardens of Lórien will fight to the death for this land, and make no mistake: many will fall. Will you leave us to bleed out our immortality onto the soil when your hands could hold us fast to life?"

"I am but one!" Galion returned angrily, his hands still raking through his disheveled locks. "I have no more skill than any of my compatriots, and less strength than many of them."

"His presence will no more guarantee your life than his absence will doom it," Brethil added cautiously.

Taurnil turned on the scribe. "Have you no faith in the Lord and Lady, then? Think you that those who guard the realm are utterly without power in this? Think you that darkness has grown so strong and we so weak?"

Brethil shifted uncomfortably. "I intended no controversy, Taurnil, and I do not disparage either our stewards or our wardens. I meant to bring news, not dissent. But you know even better than I the peril that looms before us, and you are too clever to believe this battle will be won without exacting a devastating toll." He looked again to Galion. "We will depart in a fortnight if you wish to join us." He nodded respectfully to Taurnil and hurriedly took his leave.

Taurnil's eyes were still fixed on Galion's in dismay. "Would you truly desert us?"

"I am no warden, Taurnil." His voice was spiritless. "I swore no oath; I am not bound to stay."

"And you would ever regret it if you left." He sank down beside Galion on the couch and the healer leaned in close, resting his dark head on the Galadhel's muscular arm. "You may not have sworn an oath, but you have a calling and a gift, and if you turn away you would have all the days of your undying life safe in Elvenhome for your conscience to grieve you for it. You know this."

Galion sagged even further against the supportive frame. "I no longer know anything."

Taurnil knew not what to say, and thus said nothing. He took Galion's hand in his and held it tight.

"I know not what I will do. But in any case, please say nothing of this to Haldir. This decision must be mine alone."

When Taurnil did not release his hand, Galion swallowed hard. "I ache, Taurnil. I tire of loneliness." His thumb brushed gently over the warden's knuckles. "I am weary of always being the one who heals and never the one who is succored. Stay."

Taurnil turned slowly to face him and lifted his chin, watching Galion's tongue dart across his lips in anticipation. When he spoke, his voice was sad but infinitely kind.

"You offer me what you know I have long desired, but I cannot claim it. It is my greatest wish that I could be the one who made your heart whole, but I am not. I know I am not." He tried, but failed, to school the hurt from his expression. "Would you have me suffer as you have, by giving me only a part of you? I could not bear to wake with your lovely body in my arms knowing your heart, which to me is lovelier still, lies elsewhere. I want more than that. Do I not deserve it?"

Galion shut his eyes tight against the welling tears of shame that pricked hotly in their corners.

"Ah, Taurnil… forgive my selfishness. I meant no harm."

"I know. Would that I could be the tonic for your pain." There was a slight stridence to his voice hinting at bitterness the warden was loath to own, but even in the long silence that followed, he did not relinquish the gentle grip he held on the healer's chin.

"Look at me," he whispered, and Galion opened his eyes. Taurnil's eyes were blue and guileless.

"Perhaps a single kiss will suffice to temper your loneliness and balm my pride."

Still cupping Galion's jaw, the warden brought their faces together and laid upon the healer's lips a lingering kiss that almost shattered him with its simplicity and sweetness. It was a kiss that asked nothing and expected nothing. Quietly, with no other words, Taurnil stood and left him, and Galion could not stem the tears that followed his departure. He wept for loneliness and loss and the breaking of his heart; he wept for the only home he had ever known which he knew now he must leave; and he wept for love freely given by a beautiful and deserving soul that he could not, no matter how much he wished it, return.


	10. Chapter 10

**3019 Third Age, 14 ****_Echuir_**

Twilight settled over the land, and in the darkening sky the Evenstar rose, though other stars were slow to reveal themselves, as if they would keep wrapped in the night-mantle of grief, hidden from the eyes of Elves and Men, casting deep shadows across the green places of the land.

Haldir had followed his Lord to the trees standing just beyond the girdling hedges of the glade. Strange, he thought, that the way to this place should appear to him so clearly now, found at the end of a simple pathway like any other, when ever before it had seemed veiled from prying eyes, sequestered from the view of all but the masters of this place and those they would summon.

The brook tripping down from the fountain sang and trilled, and for such a gay sound, Haldir liked it not at all; he remembered all to well the mordant laughter of the water. He felt the pang in his gut reminding him he had not eaten this day, save for the hunk of dark bread with which he had broken fast early that morning. He had been too overstrung to eat, too tightly wound by the knowledge of his mission to fill his stomach with anything other than the cold dread residing there already. Now that the time was upon him, he wished only to turn aside. His very presence here, bow in hand, profaned the glade, and brought the threat of bloodshed to a place where blood had once been willingly offered as covenant.

Celeborn was silent as a specter, moving with grace and stealth as he took his place on the broad branch of an oak whose leafy limbs stretched high above the hedgerow, affording a clear shot into the dell whilst offering concealment. His silver hair shone coldly in the dying light, a precursor to the moon not yet risen. Haldir moved further around the halo of trees to his own perch, and with an uneasy heart, he took his stance.

At length, the Lady appeared, tall and white and fair, and it seemed a great weariness sat upon her brow and her light was muted. Behind her, the Ringbearer and his companion followed on curious yet cautious feet. As she filled the basin and sent her breath across its silvery surface, Haldir shivered, for the memory of his own vision was still as vivid in his mind as if he had lived it in the flesh, and the brutality of it did not lessen with the recollection, but only grew. He turned his head but slightly to espy his Lord crouched on his branch, bow in hand but no arrow yet drawn, and if the Lady's face seemed weary, Celeborn's was nearly grey with sorrow, though the set of his features remained expressionless as a mask.

Samwise Gamgee stepped up to the basin and peered over the edge. After a few moments, his eyes widened and his mouth flew open, aghast at the tale now revealing itself to him, and he began to shout in anger about devilry run amok in the Shire.

_Oh, young Perian… it is not merely in the Shire that devilry works. You need only to turn your curly head to see the evil in your midst._

When the portly Halfling stepped away, Celeborn drew a bolt from his quiver and nocked it on the string, and Haldir did likewise. The Lady spoke kindly to Sam, and her words sang forth from her lips slowly and clearly.

"Remember the Mirror shows us many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them."

Haldir felt the incorporeal brush of her touch across his mind. The Lady knew he was there. She knew, then, of his task; knew the reason for his hidden presence. He wanted to weep. Yet it seemed to him in that moment that the distant touch was a caress. Of course she knew! What a fool was he to think otherwise. Celeborn did not undertake this awful charge in secrecy, but had sought her blessing in it and received it. She was speaking now, he understood, not only to the Halflings, but also to him, and with these words so darkly delivered, her crystalline blue gaze rose to the trees and locked with his, though he well knew he was deeply obscured by the cover of the leaves:

"The Mirror is dangerous as a guide of deeds."

The words sent a shudder through him, so ominous they felt to him. Her eyes returned to the Halflings, benevolent and wise. "Seeing is both good and perilous," she enjoined, and for good or ill, Frodo of the Shire stepped forward to the Mirror to face whatever horrors awaited him beneath its placid surface. Dire those images must have been indeed, for his whole body shook when at last the Mirror released him from its treacherous clutch, and a fine sheen of sweat stood out across his brow.

_So he has seen_, Celeborn thought grimly. _He knows the futility of his task. He has seen the Eye that seeks him, and will find him—find us all- anon._ His fingertips curled around his bowstring.

The Halfling brought out a slender chain from within his shirt and pulled it over his tousled head. A golden light glinted faintly from the ring that hung on its links. Haldir was surprised to see that it was so simple, so plain in its design. Frodo's voice was small and tremulous, but the Elf-Lord and his Marchwarden heard his words as if he shouted them with all his might.

"I will give you the One Ring, if you ask for it. It is too great a matter for me."

Celeborn of Lorien drew back his bow. His hand did not tremble as he trained the shaft on the milk-pale skin of his wife's breast. Oh, that most beloved flesh! Her laughter rang out through the grove, and it was not a joyous sound but one of anguish.

"I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask for what you offer. For many long years I pondered what I might do should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! It was brought within my grasp."

Galadriel's hand hovered over the Halfling's, and Haldir saw its slight tremor. Fingers that had seemed so warm and strong when he had held them within his own to deliver his pledge long ago now seemed painfully thin and delicate. Haldir pulled in a slow breath and took aim, sending a silent plea to the night sky and all who might be listening in that firmament that he would not need to loose his shot.

"You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night!"

And as she spoke, so she became. With the awesome violence of a summer storm, a blinding white light shot from Nenya's adamant stone, and she who bore that ring appeared before them now a thing of otherworldly and seductive beauty and ineffable potency, exquisite and horrible to behold.

Every hair on Haldir's body rose to standing, as if a lightning strike had sent its frisson through the air of the glade. But even so, he did not move, he did not breathe; he marveled, in fact, that it should be so easy… that the uncounted years of wielding this weapon would render the turning of it against a beloved friend a feat achieved with no more difficulty than to point it at an Orc, or to take down a fleeing bit of game. Should he not have found it harder to do this? The smell of leather curled in his nostrils from the well-worn tabs on his fingers, the string poised and anchored a hair's breadth from the corner of his mouth.

"I shall be stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!"

Celeborn, too, held his aim steady. It would have been nothing at all to release now and speed that bolt to its target, so perfectly balanced was that string against his fingers, so much energy coiled and ready behind the white fletching of his arrow, irrevocable death pulling at his fingertips.

But Galadriel's hand fell away, and the light receded, and with it the awful vision of Nerwen the Dread and Fair until all that stood before them were two shivering Halflings and a wan and stately Elf-Lady with a beatific smile.

"I pass the test," she said, and there was as much melancholy in her voice as relief. "I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel."

Haldir slid his arrow from the string and slipped it back into his quiver, his uneasiness corralled but not yet fled. His Lord had already unstrung his bow and sat unmoving, unblinking, on the limb with dark leaves dancing all around him in the slight breeze only now appearing, watching in silence.

"It was enough. In the end, it was enough," he whispered tautly, his eyes glittering with unfathomable emotion. Haldir was unsure if the remark had been addressed to him.

"What was, _híren_?"

Celeborn slowly turned his head to look upon the Marchwarden, his ageless face flickered first with pity, then with and concern and even disbelief, salted perhaps, by the smallest hint of anger.

"Her love for me. And mine for her." 

* * *

**3019 Third Age, 36 ****_Echuir_**

The weeks following the departure of the Fellowship had swiftly turned. Haldir was glad to see the backs of them and guided them to the borders with much greater grace than he had afforded them on their advent. The return shortly thereafter of Mithrandir on the back of Gwaihir the Wind-Lord—the Grey Pilgrim now revealed as Gandalf the White—occasioned much joy in a time when there was little else to celebrate.

Yet though white was now the color of his beard and raiment, Gandalf brought a storm-crow's grey tidings and his wise eyes held great grief, though his news was nothing Celeborn and his Lady had not already surmised: The passage of the Fellowship had not gone unnoticed; Dol Guldur was marshalling its forces and the attack they feared was imminent. The Galadhrim would not be caught unawares; Celeborn and Haldir drew up their plans and sent a few trusted scouts to the North, West and South to see what other movements of the enemy they could discern; Caras Galadhon prepared to close its gates around its denizens. The wardens of the Golden Wood made ready for war.

Haldir had returned briefly to the _talan_ he now shared with a grieving Orophin, whose wife and vintner son had chosen to depart with a band of Elves who sought the shelter of the Blessed Realm. Their vineyards had been all but obliterated under Dol Guldur's last siege, and Alquonís could not bear to see it fall again. Bitterly, the little family had drunk the cup of parting, with Orophin promising to join them in Aman as soon as their battles were won. Haldir took note that they never once spoke of failure or loss, or of the possibility that Orophin might only return to them by way of the Halls of Mandos. All the same, Orophin was bereft at their departure, and Haldir knew no words to comfort him. The shadows beneath his eyes harkened back to the long road they walked together in their youth, returning fatherless from Mordor. Haldir felt shamed by inadequacy; he had known no words to assuage his brother's pangs then, either.

As a parting gift, Ethuilion, his dear nephew, had gifted him with a small wooden soldier, the very one Haldir had left for him in the little brush-fort by the laughing stream when he was but a babe. Time had worn him nearly smooth and his tiny bow had long ago broken away leaving him standing with an empty fist, but all the same it was a most precious gift, a memory of many childhoods, not only Ethuilion's but his own and Orophin's. Through all that growth and change, the little soldier reminded him that the woods remained. And on the morrow, he and his brothers would return to the borders and take up sword and bow to watch over the enduring forest and its folk until either victory or ruin came. Once the last of the wardens departed, the gates of the city would close for good, to open again only for peace or the direst need.

Feeling pensive and at loose ends, Haldir at last swallowed his pride and sought Galion. The healer had refused his visits thrice before and he had not made any further attempt at contact since the Fellowship had arrived.

His soul ached. The sense of loss, of emptiness in his heart and a muting of his very spirit, grew sharper each day, not lesser. Even if the healer would not deign to speak with him, perhaps the relentless ache within might abate, if only slightly, if only Haldir could see him, see that he was well. Oh, it was a stunning lie, for he knew he could not more look upon Galion without wishing to speak to him than he could look upon a fine bubbling spring and not yearn to taste of its waters.

He spied upon the _talan_ from a distance, wondering if the impudent scribe was within, coyly crowing his triumphant return to Galion's bed. The thought of it made him hot with anger, every muscle in his strapping frame tensing at the unwanted visions pervading his mind, and worse, the knowledge that if such were indeed the case, he had only himself to look to for the blame. He rallied, climbed the ladder, and when no response met his knocking, he let himself inside.

Empty. The _talan_ was empty.

The couch still stood, aye, and the table and chairs, and he could see the corner of the bed frame in the room beyond, but this place was no longer inhabited. Gone, the clothes from the wardrobe and the linens from the bed. Gone, too, the contents of the cabinets in the kitchen: no herbs, no wine, nor goblets, nor dishes. And most distressing of all, no books. Not a single tome remained on the shelves. No tiny chapbooks, no oversized histories… just a thin line of dust to mark where their bindings had stood upon the planks. The shelves that lined the length of the wall were utterly bare.

Bare, save only one thing: a round, grey river stone sat unwanted and alone on the otherwise empty shelves. He took it in his hands and stared, heartsick, for its abandonment meant only one thing: Galion was gone. He was gone, with no notice, with no word, without even the most perfunctory note to mark his departure. He lowered himself to the couch and simply stared at the floor. Was he such a black figure, then, that nigh a century of devoted loving and uncounted years of sworn brotherhood did not merit even the most curt of farewells? Had he behaved so abominably in their parting that Galion would indeed cut their bonds to the quick and leave the land of his birth without so much as a backward glance? Curse it, he had done no more than what was demanded of him! The Mirror had shown him no alternative!

All at once, the stew of loneliness and guilt and betrayal and remorse fused together within him in a white-hot alloy of rage. The sounds of despair clawing their way out of his chest rang out discordantly in the empty chamber. With a wounded roar, he leapt to his feet and hurled the rock as hard as he could and heard the vaguely satisfying crack as it broke through the latticework of the screen in the window and disappeared.

Later, Orophin, whose heart still grieved its own loss, offered only cold comfort and a half-hearted shrug.

"Come the morrow, Celeborn will employ you so entirely in his preparations that you will have little time to dwell."

Under the circumstances, it was all he could think to say. 

* * *

**3019 Third Age, 40 ****_Echuir_**

Deep in the woods, the war drums echoed. The children of the forest would not walk to their fates in silence, and it seemed even the trees kept time, dipping their branches in cadence with the martial throb, the shadow of their leaves a shifting filigree on the fair faces of the Galadhrim who journeyed to the borders in the gilded light of dawn.

Haldir moved silently through the camp, surveying the men arrayed before him and beyond. They were an industrious lot, sharpening swords and hoisting barrels of arrows onto the archers' _telain_. Each kept to his task in palpable silence. Rúmil fletched arrows beside a small fire, using a broad stump for his table. Their eyes met and a faint smile played upon the younger's lips. The elder returned it, but his breath caught in his chest.

_Celeborn will make of me a kinslayer yet, when my orders send them to their death before this night is through. May their souls forgive me._

He stopped by Rúmil's side, watching his brother's nimble fingers sliding cropped feathers into precise groves, tying them down tightly. His heart crawled into his throat as he recalled the sound of his brother's dying screams. Even though that fate had been averted, he could not help but to remember what might have come to pass, and how it would have broken him; to see Rúmil here before him drove the full impact of it home. He wanted at that moment to be a brother rather than a marchwarden, and two impulses warred within him: to take Rúmil and clasp him to his chest, imploring him to stay alert and safe, to stay alive...and the need to remain firm, with eyes front and shoulders squared, showing his men the true deportment of a leader.

A compromise, then: He reached down and stroked the golden head, over-warm from the nearness of the flames. His brother shifted toward him, never looking up. Long, tapering fingers let a feather fall that they might reach up, clasp Haldir's hand, and bring it down to rest on his own strong shoulder in a silent gesture of trust and love. With his brother's head inclined against him, Haldir kept his eyes forward and his chin up, and felt the deepening of his resolve. Blood would be shed on Lorien's soil; of that he had no doubt. But the Galadhrim would prevail.

The sound of new voices prompted him to look behind toward the path where now a bevy of green cloaks could be seen. Laden down with heavy packs of herbs and salves and bandages, the healers had arrived. The clench of Haldir's stomach was instantaneous and severe. Though he knew the one he sought would not be counted in their number, he could not help but to scan their faces in search of Galion; his absence still somehow came as both a disappointment and a surprise.

When the Master Healer finished his briefing, the healers hefted their burdens and splintered away two by two, heading for their stations throughout the wood. As the last of them began to move toward the eastern road, Haldir blinked and turned away. Abruptly, he turned back again and stared hard at the lately departing pair.

"Galion."

The Elf turned slowly, weighed down as he was by his pack, and said nothing, regarding Haldir with eyes of hyaline grey shining with sorrows. Haldir's heart hammered in his chest.

"You…"

The healer maintained his silence. He inclined his head, though whether that small nod was an acknowledgement or greeting or some other gesture entirely, Haldir could not say. And then his partner called to him, and he turned and was gone down the leaf-lined path.

It was all Haldir could do not to follow. 

* * *

**3019 Third Age, 41-42 ****_Echuir_**

"Look at them."

Across the Anduin, the armies of Dol Guldur were mustering. The black tower rose up from Amon Lanc like a barbarous phallus and the creatures that swarmed its base appeared as nothing if not an oily slick of noisome seed. The din of their shouts and howls for Elvish blood were audible even at this distance, as was the banging of their pikes against their shields. Haldir spied not only Yrch, but men, and even trolls and wargs. Eru only knew what other base and nameless creatures lurked in their ranks. The night, when it came, would rise clear beneath the imperfect circle of a moon just past full, but already, even under the auspice of a hazy late-day sun, an ill omen was in the air, every living creature on its guard, waiting.

"They show their numbers. They seek to cow us with their size."

Feredir's arms remained crossed over his torso. "And are we cowed?"

Haldir snorted. "They have numbers, but they must assault directly. They have no cover, no place to hide, unless they retreat to the Dark Tower. We have the trees, and they will keep us. We have archers that would rival Duilin's swallows, and our height and range will serve us well. And we, along with our superior skill, have also the Lady's wards to protect us."

_And we have Nenya's strength, so long as it holds. Would that I were at liberty to speak of it; it might hearten the men to know it now._

"They do not fear us, nor do they fear the Lady's magic."

"What is this?" Haldir laughed. "My own lieutenant doubts our strength? Let them come. Let them bring their malice. Lorien will break them on the Anduin's shores. They do not see our preparations; they think they will catch us unawares. Let them labor long under that illusion."

While the enemy shouted and cursed, the forces of Lorien were silent in their trees. No motion could be seen beyond the eaves. Had one stood at the foot of Dol Guldur and looked ahead to the West, only the treeline would they have seen. But within the woods, the wardens were ready. The archers had taken to their platforms, the pikers to their pits, and swordsmen marked the second line.

Feredir restively shifted his weight from foot to foot. "And what of the scouts? Have you heard word of what snares they lay for us elsewhere? You cannot believe they mean only to attack from the East."

Haldir angled his head toward his law-brother. "I have had no word yet. I know only that the East is where the bulk of their forces are gathered, and so for now it is on the East that I will fix my eyes. It will be a trying night, Feredir, make no mistake. But I cannot afford the luxury of doubt, nor can you. You have your own men to lead."

Feredir hissed out a sigh. "You have the right of it. I will gather them now and take them north of the Naith as you ordered. We will not be out of earshot of your patrol, and there will be no gaps in our lines. Not an inch of our borders will go unprotected, whether by ward or by sword. We learned that lesson hard from Tathalion's losses."

"Aye, we did. But in the Dark Days, we had not the Lady's strength to shield us. We are stronger. We are ready. This night is not that one."

A heavy sigh, and Feredir's arms dropped to his sides. "Nay, Captain. I fear this night is darker yet." He saluted the Marchwarden and turned away, jerking up the hood of his cloak as he walked.

Haldir refused to let Feredir's grim prediction unnerve him, not when Galion's unexpected appearance heartened him so. He stepped back into the trees and found a place where he might for a moment be alone. He pulled his sword from its sheath. His father had carried this blade to the very gates of Mordor. In Orophin's hands, it had dealt death in numbers too great to count. It served another son now, but the same cause. Freshly honed and oiled, it gleamed viciously in the moonlight. As he held it, he thought upon the words of his oath and silently recited them.

_By root and by star, by the blood in my veins, in the presence of Iluvatar, I, Haldir, Son of Guilin, take this sword for Lothlorien, that I might safeguard all that lies within her borders with all that I possess, even unto the sacrifice of my immortal life. Let that life be forfeit should I ever forsake this oath._

Renewed in spirit as his oath was renewed, he felt compelled to speak the words aloud.

"By root and by star, by the blood in my veins, in the presence of Iluvatar, I, Haldir, Son of Guilin, take this sword for Lothlorien…"

As he spoke, his blood came alive within him and he felt potent, indestructible. By the time he recited the closing words, his voice had soared to a shout.

"…Let that life be forfeit should I ever forsake this oath!"

He looked down upon the blade and saw now that the inscription writ upon the metal was glowing with a pale blue light. The sword seemed to hum in his hands, its innate power unleashed by its keeper's fervid declarations.

_Gurth a chyth-in-Lorien!_

He brandished it high above his head, feeling the beat of his heart fall into synch with the distant drums. Death to the foes of Lorien!

When Khamûl's savage shriek rent the twilight, bringing on the threshing tail of its mount an uncanny moment of silence, Haldir knew his hour had come. 

* * *

The battle began not with a massive surge, but with three tar-blackened rafts riding the current of the Anduin.

"They seek to startle the snake by beating down the grass," Haldir grunted under his breath. This opening gambit was but a test to observe the Galadhrim's reactions and glean what they could about their defenses. Their actions now would determine the next move from Dol Guldur. The wardens at the point of the Naith scrambled to pull up the spike beds, but Haldir stayed them.

"Not yet. If they think the river unguarded, they will send a greater portion by water and we will reap a reward for our patience."

The Yrch landed their boats and, seeing no one to oppose them, made for the forest, howling with glee at the ease of their invasion. Those howls turned just as quickly to pain as the swordsmen stepped out of the shadows to cut them down one by one.

"Send a messenger to my Lord!" Haldir called to one of his men. If more ships were making ready up the Anduin, it would be a simple task to move armies over the river as well as down it, and an attack from the Gladden Fields would follow. Whether this night or in the nights to follow, they would be hit from the North as well as from the East.

In time, a greater fleet appeared, and not merely rafts but ships under sail, and only then did Haldir give the call to raise the spikes. It was as if Ulmo's own hand rose armored from the river's precipitous flow to rend the hulls of the advancing crafts and send the devious mariners into the deeps. The furious screams and splashes of the capsized rang out over the crack and crunch of splintering wood.

Meanwhile, the seething morass in the East had formed ranks and moved now toward the wood in formations like tortoise shells, with shield-bearers on all sides and even covering their heads. Like the creatures they emulated, they moved slowly, but were nearly impervious to the ranged weapons of the Wood, and Haldir warned the archers against wasting their shot until they came close enough for the Elves to see the narrow spaces left uncovered which afforded them a meager chance to take down a foe.

As the ships crashed against the barricades, mangled timber caught in the spikes and chains and likewise tangled the bodies of the drowned. When the cover of the archers afforded it, wardens with long pikes dashed to the water's edge and pushed free the accumulating debris so the Anduin would rush it away, but they could not clear the stoppage fast enough, and creatures who routinely cannibalized their fallen kin had no compunction about crossing a river on the corpses of their dead. When the well-armored clusters came nearer to the river, they did just that, the rear lines breaking away and making a run for the makeshift bridges. Though the archers picked them off with ease, their deaths only added mass to the obstruction and the lieutenants called for the spikes to be lowered once more.

Four of the gates descended easily enough, but the fifth was too clogged with bodies and wreckage to be moved, and one of the pikers sprinted out of the eaves to force it down by hand. Already, a line of Yrch had begun to move across. The warden looked at the approaching foemen and jumped onto the spike-gate with all his weight. It shuddered but did not fall. He jabbed his pike into a bloated black corpse wedged between the spikes and the shoreline, its gaping maw frozen wide in a death-scream. Many blows fell before the body was wrenched free, but the gate then collapsed immediately, sending the Yrch who had traversed half the span of the river into its flashing currents and away. The Elf, too, disappeared below the surface of the water and Haldir cursed. Some time later he would rejoice to find that the piker had managed to grab hold of a fistful of sailcloth that had caught up on the spikes and a keen-eyed comrade had spotted him flailing in the water and had thrown a line and hauled him out, exhausted and choking but very much alive.

The armored platoons that trod slowly over the impoverished soil eventually came to a halt along the river's edge, the front ranks parting to reveal crude onagers at the centers of their formation. These small siege engines each took four Yrch to crank the windlass.

"Balefire!"

Sweet Eru, the onagers would launch firepots into the wood! Curse Khamûl and his black soul! Balefire was all but impossible to extinguish, and the Lady's wards repelled only living things, not storms of fire pitched from the sky.

The Galadhrim let fly a round from the trees, but to limited effect, and no sooner had their arrows landed but the onagers kicked back mulishly and sent off a volley of their own, no fewer than three projectiles coming from every basket. One of the archers got off a shot as they flew, and the object popped wetly, landing with a squelching sound and forming a brackish puddle on the ground below. The rest sailed beyond them into the forest.

A warden leapt from a talan and darted off into the woods to discover what had been thrown, if not the dreaded balefire. A good distance away, he found it: a dark, translucent orb large enough to fill both his hands as he lifted it for examination. A queer black form writhed within and the Elf shuddered. He turned and called to his captain, his voice thick with revulsion.

"_Ungol_!"

These were not firepots, but eggs. Swollen, fetid eggs laid by the giant spiders infesting Mirkwood. Should they hatch and take up residence here, the Golden Wood would soon bear its own dark moniker.

"Find them all." Haldir's lips curled in disgust and he signaled for some of his men to join their comrade in his search for the malignant pearls. "Burn them." 

* * *

Slowly, the night passed. He was infinitely grateful that their casualties were few, but no victory had been decisively claimed and Dol Guldur had not yet retreated. He felt poised, as he rode to the north marches, for some greater deed of malice. As yet, the enemy had merely circled and sniffed at their borders like a hungry cur; the great, toothy maw had yet to bear its fangs and sink them deep. Knowing this was but a tactic to keep them wary and unbalanced did little to alleviate his pervasive unease. Beneath him, his mount's long, rocking strides were so even and smooth he could almost forget how swiftly he traveled, and as the morning wore, he could see Feredir's patrol coming into view.

Night had not passed so easily in the North. Haldir felt the strange prickle on the back of his neck that told him he had crossed beyond the Lady's wards. A band of woodland stretched ahead before him, and the marshes of the _Loeg Ningloron_ spread out beyond. It was in this gap that Feredir's men had been set upon by wargs, werewolves, and bands of Yrch. Haldir kept all of his border guards beyond the wards; Galadriel's magic would be their final defense, not their first. He would not have her expend herself when her wardens were so desirous of proving their own skill and valor. But though all had proved that skill and valor in the night, many had not lived to see the dawn. Haldir closed his eyes and sent up a silent valediction when passing the line of Galadhrim lying sill and silent beneath the grey shrouds of their cloaks.

"They mean to charge, and soonest," Feredir briefed him as he approached. A large force had gathered on the wetlands: Wargs and riders, Yrch, and men Haldir recognized by their dress and weapons as Easterlings.

"Bring more of your archers here and we will drive them west," Haldir ordered.

The piercing cry and the slow flapping of opaque, leathery wings moved a foul wind over the Marchwarden and his lieutenant as the Shadow of the East descended before them.

"Tell your Bitch-Queen to surrender, Elf. You have no chance of holding." The thin rasp of the Wraith pierced keen as a lance-blade and carried a frigidity on his razor tongue that seemed to pierce the core of all unfortunate enough to hear it, but Haldir faced him down and returned his threat with contempt.

"Fly back to your roost, _snaga_. She will not surrender, nor will we."

"Then you shall perish!"

With a roar, the assembled host flew forward toward the wood.

"Arrows!"

A salvo sang from the trees and a many of the raiders on the eastern flank fell. Those who remained scrambled toward the western edge of the field.

"Again!"

Another round of white-fletched fury and another hit to the eastern side. The foemen bellowed and pressed further to the west as they charged. A more desperate cry suddenly resounded in the field as those who tried to evade the rain of arrows from the east sank into the marshes, and unable to run, turned themselves into perfect targets. High in the trees, Rúmil bantered with Orophin, wagering the tally of his dead would be greatest by the battle's end.

"The fleet fingers of youth are no match for the skilled eye of experience," Orophin pithily retorted, and an Easterling sank into the fen with one of the elder brother's bolts planted square between his eyes.

As the line of the enemy narrowed, Feredir called his charge and his swordsmen took the field, harrying the dark army in the foothills, a mighty mithril hammer of Elven make crashing against an anvil of Hithaeglir's unyielding stone. Those who did not fall to the blade fell to the arrows of the sons of Guilin and their brothers-in-arms. Those who escaped with their lives howled their thrashing as they fled south. The screech of Khamûl's fell beast sounded like a resounding curse cast upon them as the Black Easterling rose out of range of the archers and up, up, till he was naught but a spot of filth against the clearing sky. 

* * *

Haldir reveled in their triumph, though it had come on a tide of Elvish blood. Yet while some had died, the casualties were not as grim as any had feared, and this gave the Galadhrim much hope.

"Khamûl has fled," the Marchwarden told Celeborn, and though his features were appropriately composed, the Lord of Lorien could see the pride lingering around a mouth that clearly wished to crow. Would that he did not need to be the bearer of cautious admonition now, for a moment of celebration would have been a boon to all.

"He has conceded nothing. He flies to Minas Tirith; the Lady has seen it. He has left two of his lieutenants behind and they will continue to wreak havoc in his stead. This is not over, not by any means. This was little more than a feint. I sense there is far, far worse to come, Haldir."

Haldir's sanguine mien faltered only for a moment. "I did not imagine our victory would be handed to us without hardship. 'Tis grim news for us, and worse, I imagine, for Gondor. Yet if the Black Easterling goes south, it is because Sauron has not yet claimed victory there, is it not? The Ringbearer may yet live."

Celeborn nodded, letting a glimmer of hope sparkle in his ancient eyes that were so often shuttered against anything other than cool impassivity. "Frodo may yet live." 

* * *

The Marchwarden toured the provisional infirmaries at the border and mourned over the bodies of the fallen which were even now being prepared for transport back to Caras Galadhon; the gates of the city would be opened to them one last time. He would not be able to return with them and see their final honors, so he offered his own lament alone.

It was there among the healers that he found Galion tending to the wounds of one of Feredir's swordsmen who had been viciously slashed as they pressed the Yrch army into the mountains.

"A moment, healer, if you would." He hated resorting to rank to bully Galion into an audience, but his desperation had forced him to use all means at his disposal. Galion merely nodded and returned to his task.

Later, he stepped away, beyond the tents and pavilions, and Haldir followed him.

"I thought you had abandoned me." It was not an auspicious opening, and Haldir cursed his impatient tongue ere it even ceased its rash wagging. Galion made a harsh noise in response.

"You have no call to speak of abandonment, _mellon_." The cool appellation stung like a slap and echoed like the insult it was. After a moment, Galion's expression thawed.

"I tried to leave. Merciful Eru, but I tried!"

Haldir moved closer, but not so close that Galion would balk. "Your quarters were empty. Everything was gone, all of it. Except…"

He looked up and his face was a mask of misery. "Forgive me, Galion, I was so angry… I was furious that you would leave me without a word. I threw away the river stone. I could not bear to see it sit alone on those empty shelves, chastising me."

The corner of Galion's mouth edged slyly upward in the beginning of an arch retort. "Yes, the hole in my screens did not go unnoticed. Good thing the rock was small."

A sound of sudden anguish forced its way through the constriction in Haldir's throat. "It was the first thing I ever gave you! It was a child's declaration of love when he did not yet have the words to speak it, and I threw it away in anger!"

It was hard to say whether there was more pity or annoyance in the healer's expression. "It was merely a rock, Haldir. Search the ground below the _talan_ if it grieves you so much. It likely lies there still."

Haldir wanted to rail that Galion had missed the point entirely, but a glance at the healer's face told him to beware. He had indeed understood, but he wished not to speak of it. Chastened, Haldir cast his gaze back to the ground.

"Where do you stay, then, if your home stands empty? Where are your things?"

"My things are gone. I did not wish to delay the travelers by trying to sort out my own packs from theirs, so I returned only with what I carried and left the rest in Brethil's keeping."

"But your books!"

"Brethil, too, has achieved some passing skill in literacy," he quipped. "It seemed a fair exchange for his _talan_."

Haldir stiffened. "You stay in the scribe's home now."

"It is no longer his home; he has gone. It is my home now. It is small and close to the healing houses and it comes with no painful memories. Do not rebuke me, Haldir. Do not dare."

There was as much despondence and loneliness in his voice as anger, and this unduly gave Haldir hope.

"I do not! Not at all! How can I rebuke you when you returned for me?"

Galion turned with such sudden force that Haldir's arms reflexively started as if to fend off a blow.

"I did not return for _you_, Haldir!" Again, his face had gone cold and stark and unfamiliar. "I have my place in this battle, too, and I do not merely serve at your whim, Marchwarden." He left the glade quickly, and Haldir did not follow. The light in his heart that had gone undimmed since the end of the battle guttered and failed like a candle in the swift wind of Galion's departure.

Notes: As with the previous chapter, Galadriel's words are taken directly from canon text, FOTR, "The Mirror of Galadriel."


	11. Chapter 11

The following chapters owe a huge debt of gratitude to Marnie for letting me borrow some ideas from her work, "The Battle of the Golden Wood." More information can be found at the end of these chapters, as it is too spoilery to include up front.  
Marnie's story can be read at ?stid=957

Chapter Text

**Third Age 3019, 45-47 ****_Echuir_**

Four days after the first battle, the sky over Lothlorien was no longer blue. The bright clarity of spring sun had been leached away, leaving a vast expanse of ashen cloud and lusterless light. Through the wan skyscape an infinitesimal fleck grew steadily closer: a thrush, winging from East. Small enough to evade the notice of the foe's armies, she had sailed swiftly with her message, a scroll tightly bound to her leg. The news mixed darkness with cautious hope, and Haldir thanked her for her troubles as she hopped from his hand to forage on the ground before he sped off to deliver it to Celeborn.

"Dol Guldur rises against the Greenwood. Hundreds upon hundreds swarm the forest there. I weep for our kin, yet I am glad the Black Tower has turned its attentions elsewhere."

Celeborn cast a look toward the Mirror grove where his wife was sequestered. She had gone into seclusion with the rise of the sun, hoping to discern some hint of the enemy's plans. She needed the close silence of the glade to center herself, for she needed to keep her entire being focused on the land, her own life's energy spiraling outward, feeding Nenya and allowing the wards to hold despite the enemy's assaults.

The Elf-lord shook his head. "Dark tidings these are, but I do not think they will give us respite. You have seen their numbers; they could turn half as many on Eryn Galen and still plague us mightily. I, too, have had word, but this from our scouts in the South. Isengard sends creatures of its own devising both to Gondor and to us. Uruk-hai, they are called, and they are larger and stronger than Yrch; the light of the sun does not weaken them, and they are capable of far greater cleverness than the rabble we have dealt with. This is not over, Haldir; we have not yet seen the worst."

Haldir grunted in acknowledgement but before further words could be exchanged, a runner appeared, agitated and breathless, before them.

"My Lord, Marchwarden… you must come quickly. Great evil is upon us."

* * *

Rising brashly against the blighted tree line far beyond the Anduin, the trebuchets rolled ploddingly toward Lorien, dragged over the wasted earth by cave-trolls whose aggrieved bellows followed every snap of the Yrch-lash that drove them. The runner reported that others were even at that moment being assembled on the Gladden Fields, brought by boat during the first assault just as Haldir had feared. The arm of each weapon was the hastily debarked trunk of a sycamore, now shorn of leaves and branches, covered in pitch, and impressed as an instrument of destruction. Behind them, covered wains approached, driven by Easterlings who appeared as inhuman and savage as the Yrch they followed. Haldir sickened to see the war engines. On the Dagorlad, the trebuchets of Barad Dûr had heaved boulders over the fortress walls and on to the ranks of archers below. Orophin had lost two comrades, and very nearly his own life, when ballast had fallen. With no fallen ramparts to pillage, no mountains to mine, Haldir despaired of considering what the machines would fling on his land.

"They intend to burn Lorien to the ground," Celeborn growled. The tarpaulins covering the wagons had been pulled back, revealing enormous clay vessels. This was the balefire they had feared, but magnified hundredfold. The heinous brew within would ignite at the touch of air when the vessel shattered and would burn on, indifferent to water and difficult to smother. "We can only hope their range is not so far as Caras Galadhon."

The Marchwarden's countenance was grim. "These will not reach, but we will have much trouble in the North. There is no river to impede them on the Gladden Fields, and we have no such artillery in our own arsenal to counter them. So long as they escape the marshes, they can roll death to our door."

Celeborn passed a hand wearily over his face. "We must pull away from the borders and draw our line of defense closer. The borderlands over the Celebrant and the eaves of the wood must be abandoned."

Rage burned hotter in Haldir than any fire. He closed his eyes as if the darkness behind his lids would somehow quell his anger. Were they not the guardians of the trees, stewards of all that grew here in this green place? Would they truly leave their charges to fall to the flames of Dol Guldur?

_Aye_, he shuddered. _We would. We must._

The resonant toll of the ancient Sinda's voice rose. "I have tended these trees for years uncounted. I was here when my Lady pressed the silver seeds of the mellyrn into the soil. I do not give this order lightly."

Celeborn's eyes were on him when he opened his own. He did not ask for Haldir's thoughts, though his look was a tacit demand. His order would stand, but he would have preferred his most trusted defender to execute it willingly.

"Elemmakil taught me that sometimes one must sacrifice the silver to save the gold," the Marchwarden repined. "So be it." 

* * *

"Fall back!"

The steps of the retreating wardens made no sound as their captain flew through the wood with his order.

"Fall back!"

Above him, his brothers continued to rain down their shot upon the advancing Yrch, giving Haldir cover as long as they dared. Word had reached the patrols of the siege engines and their imminent fire. Already, Celeborn had overseen the exodus of the southern borderlands and Feredir had drawn in his men from the Naith. Now Haldir moved down the northern edge of the forest, alerting the remaining patrols that vicious weather approached, and soon.

"Let us away," Orophin hissed. "We have tarried overlong."

Rúmil's fingers opened, releasing another arrow from the string and shook his head. "A moment more… He cannot see what approaches when he roams the ground."

Orophin made a noise of irritation, his body poised to leap to an adjacent tree in retreat. "Have a care for your own hide. Haldir can fend well for himself and he has given his order. He will not be pleased to have a brother flout it." And with that, he was gone, only a bobbing of the branch to mark that but a minute prior he had posed there.

Through the canopy, Rúmil could see out onto the Gladden fields, could see the great black arm of the siege engine drawing steadily back. He thought if he listened closely, he could hear the groan of straining ropes as the thralls cranked the windlass. He gave a whistle of alarm and scanned the ground for his brother when it went unanswered. A few moments passed before he saw Haldir a scant furlong ahead. He whistled again, and Haldir looked up, his face fixed in a frown.

"Fall back, I said! That was an order!"

"The engine is ready," Rúmil shouted in desperation. "You, too, must fly!"

The Marchwarden shook his head vehemently. "Not until all the patrols have withdrawn! Now go!"

He trekked on eastward and did not look behind him to see if Rúmil had obeyed. He had not, for he had seen dark shapes moving fast through the forest, not Yrch now, but Uruk-hai, and his brother was alone on the ground. Not even Haldir could put down a dozen Uruk-hai without assistance. Stealth would be his friend; he did not call out but leapt silently from tree to tree, following in his captain's wake.

He had nearly caught up to Haldir in the line of elderly oaks when the war whoops of the foemen turned his head to the field. A crash echoed through the wood, followed by the _woosh_ of balefire catching light.

The conflagration was instantaneous.

Rúmil heard animal shrieks, but it was an Elf that dove from the tree in front of him, flopping helplessly on the ground, his entire body engulfed in flames. He called out helplessly but he had no means to extinguish balefire. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and sent it through the Elf's heart, dispatching him far swiftly than the flames would have. Even after the Elf's spirit had fled, the body moved, curled in on itself, fists drawn up as if it wished to beat back the pain. There was no time even to shed a tear for the loss. Soon the forest would be rank with the odor of charred meat that Rúmil could already smell wafting from the dead warden, and he would not be the last to fall to the flames. Rúmil's stomach seized and a flood of bile raced a caustic trail up his throat.

Another crash, and again the sound of ignition. The archer's skin was nearly seared by the heat, but he did not turn from it, shielding his eyes as he peered through the rising wall of flame to seek out his brother. He could not see him. He could see the fleeing backs of other wardens, but of Haldir there was no sign.

He looked to the trees for a clear path around the flames, and once he had found it, he shouldered his bow and charged on. 

* * *

When the first firepot exploded, spewing its sudden devastation, Haldir was rooted to the spot by his shock. In the blink of an eye, the forest around him burst in greasy flares. The trees, the groundcover, and all that harbored within were alight, and the flaming oil dripped a rain of death from above. He heard horrible, high-pitched screams and knew that the fire had already claimed its first lives. Abruptly, then, the sound stopped, and he felt concomitant pangs of horror and relief that the suffering had been brief.

As the impenetrable wall of flames rose up around him he felt not heat, but a cold prickle down the back of his neck. He had seen this.

_No._

He refused to give credence to what his eyes told him. Rúmil had retreated, he reminded himself. He was safely away from this inferno. He watched in impotent revulsion as poplars and elms he had known since birth cried out from their roots to their leafy crowns and died as so much kindling. Unctuous smoke begrimed him and the smell rising to his nostrils left no question that death was riding hard on the wake of the flames. The fire had disoriented him; trees he had used for thousands of years as guideposts were either now unidentifiable blackened wreckage or obscured by the translucent red curtain of fire.

Another firepot exploded and lit the forest with obscene light, hemming him in between burning walls. He dragged a hand across his face to swab the sweat from his eyes. He thought he heard the tramp of footsteps, but sounds were difficult to discern over the din of dying trees, crackling flames, and the distant screams of those who burned.

A warden's whistle split the air like a blade and Haldir's head instinctively craned toward the sound. Rúmil loomed above him in a mallorn, his bow drawn. Haldir followed the line of his arm and saw the Uruk-hai, undaunted by the devouring heat, closing in on him quickly. But the sound of Rúmil's whistle had drawn their attention as well as Haldir's, and for a moment, they turned away from him and looked up into the tree.

_No…no!_

He knew the rock would fly even before he saw the arc of the sling that hurled it, felt the impact of it before it reached its target. He knew, because he had seen it in his nightmares a hundred times before. Rúmil dropped his bow, reeling, and toppled backward off the branch. He fell quickly, though; in his vision Rúmil's descent had been eerily prolonged, as if he had been falling through water. But just as in his vision, Haldir could do nothing. He heard the song of arrows and knew his brother lost.

A groan and then a crack like a thunderbolt heralded the falling of a mighty bough from a locust tree, which plummeted from its host as quickly as Rúmil had fallen from his. He tried to leap out of the way, but he was not swift enough. The limb hit him with incredible force and drove him to the ground. He was still attempting to focus his swimming eyes before he realized that he could not move. The bough had pinned him and he could not lift it. He could smell burning wool as his cloak caught alight from the burning twigs and leaves. A moment later he could feel the back of his legs begin to burn. A scream rose up through the trees, a howl of pain and futile desperation. With a strange sense of detachment he knew that he had heard this very cry before. It had come to him in the Mirror, and it had been the sound of death. He had not recognized it for his own.

Through the clamor, he heard Galion's voice, but he could not answer. The pain subsumed him, and the terrible reckoning of the full measure of his failure and ignorance froze the scream in his throat and cut it off like the squeal of a boar under the slaughterer's knife.

As blackness swept up around him, he knew only two things: pain, and the horrifying revelation that the vision he had been granted in the Mirror was not the shape of things to come had he accepted his heart's demand, but the reality bequeathed to him because he had refused it. 

* * *

He had not expected to awaken, but awaken he did. Slowly and stiffly.

His head ached fiercely, as did his shoulders and back, and his legs had been burned nearly up to his backside, though the thick wool of his uniform must have offered some protection. The healers had cut it away and left him in naught but a breechclout, but even naked and slathered with cooling unguent he could feel the heat trapped beneath his skin as if fire licked at it still. The noise of battle had receded to an abstracted tumult in this part of the forest, well away from the fires and the front. The scent of scorched hair clung tenaciously to his nostrils, but above him, a tracery of shadow danced across the tent canvas, and the sight soothed him. When at last he taken stock of his various pains, deeming none of them devastating, and had forced his eyes to still and focus, he cautiously turned his head to see who occupied the cot beside him.

It was Rúmil. He was swathed in bandages and a livid bruise extended beyond the boundaries of the wraps, ringing his eye. But he was alive, very much alive. The sudden rush of joy made Haldir's head swirl.

"Sweet Eru, _muindor_, I believed you lost."

The younger Galadhel forced a smile around gritted teeth. "I was found." The shot that had knocked him from the tree had done the least damage; the fall had taken a larger toll in fractured bones, though the moss and thick carpeting of leaves had softened his landing somewhat. "As were you," he added weakly, gingerly raising his hand to his swaddled head. He was terribly weary and miserable with pain, but the healers had forbidden him sleep or poppy's milk until they determined the injury to his head posed no risk of claiming him. As it was, he almost wished for death; it seemed a pleasant reprieve from the war drums throbbing in his skull and the stabbing pains that accompanied each breath.

"I saw this in the Mirror… I thought I had averted it. I thought I had spared you."

Haldir's gaze still hovered warily over his brother, as if he expected Rúmil to suddenly vanish. Confusion and relief roiled within him. He had seen his brother fall, seen the Uruk-hai circling with their slashing knives, and yet he lived!

"Fool, you could not even spare yourself!" Now the younger Elf's smile was genuine, though it quickly reverted to a grimace. "Ah, I can jest no more. 'Tis too painful."

"I saw the knives! I heard the arrows!"

"Those were no Orcish bolts, brother; those were arrows of Lorien! Orophin sought Feredir when I did not follow him and alerted him that the idiot sons of Guilin had not the sense to retreat, so your Lieutenant decided to come fetch us and save us from our dedication to duty."

Haldir might have smiled, albeit shamefacedly, save that the situation still felt so dire to him, and his mind rang uncomfortably with the echoes of his vision. How could he have so grievously misjudged the Mirror's message?

"Breath of Manwë, Rúmil! Have you no idea how close you came to death? 'Tis a wonder Feredir found us at all."

Rúmil's face gentled, a secret smile playing on his lips. "Nay, it was no wonder. He heard me. I called to him in my need and he came for me."

Haldir closed his eyes. He had never truly fathomed the true depth of love's power; that a bound soul would hearken so readily to the song of its mate. In his misguided imaginings, love had been a millstone to carry, an obstacle to duty and a deadly distraction. Yet he had seen the truth of it right before his eyes again and again: the potency of devotion which girded a pure heart from the most seductive of all temptations; the strength of emotion which overshadowed even the dazzling proposition of omnipotence; the unvoiced cry of a soul in peril heard and answered by its sworn guardian. A memory emerged, a recollection of his first and only conversation with Glorfindel of Imladris, the curious look upon the Elda's face as he had spoken:

_Where love is given and returned, there is no weakness, pen-neth._

Another voice came to him then, that of the Lady, and even now he could feel the touch of her fingers soft on his head.

_You know now what you must do. You know now what your heart demands._

_Ignorant lackwit_, he silently wailed. _Your heart demanded Galion and yet you heeded it not!_ He had ever placed duty above all, heeding Elemmakil's exhortations and treating love as a plague. But he had succumbed nonetheless to his oldest companion and dearest friend, and he had never known such peace or happiness as he had in Galion's arms. He had destroyed that happiness by doing what he believed duty demanded of him. Yet in failing to follow his heart, he had failed in his duty nonetheless. To himself, and to Galion.

The archer read the crux of his brother's thoughts in his face and stretched out a hand.

"He came for you, Haldir."

As if summoned by the cast of Rúmil's whispered words, the healer stepped into the tent, though he did not immediately approach the brothers. Haldir's heart thundered to see him, his very flesh all but dancing on his bones at the nearness of that most beloved form. He looked well, if weary, but Haldir saw that his left hand was bandaged and wondered at the wound. Galion worked his way from cot to cot, checking dressings and feeling for fevers as he passed. At length he made his way to them, nodding brusquely at Haldir, fatigue plain in his face, before turning to Rúmil.

"I will give you something for the pain now, if you like. The most dangerous hours have passed and if you wish to sleep, you may."

Another weak smile crossed the younger brother's face. "I should like nothing more."

Galion brought the poppy's milk quickly and helped Rúmil to drink it. Once the archer had swallowed the bitter draught down, he passed his hand lightly over the Rúmil's eyes, murmuring softly as Haldir had seen him do—had felt for himself—so many times before. Rúmil's body went limp as sleep engulfed him and his haggard muscles slowly released intransigent tension.

For Haldir, to have Galion so close and yet not speaking, not touching, was a torment. When the healer turned, he found Haldir's stare settling heavily upon him, holding him steadfast. Desolate grey eyes met regretful blue and neither blinked. The air in the short distance between them thrummed as though charged by a sudden storm, pregnant with possibility. It was Galion who broke the unnerving contact and looked down the length of the tent with eyes gone distant and guarded.

"You may return to your men on the morrow if your legs can bear it; the blisters will soon begin to rise. Yet your body is strong and is healing quickly. A runner will fetch a new uniform for you."

His voice was flat as he spoke, and when he had finished, the silence between them was ponderous and thick as mud. At the last, Galion's head drooped and he began to turn away.

"Galion, please…"

The healer shot him a rueful look. Haldir realized then that he had not thought on what he might say. The healer had avoided him at every turn since their parting, but now that he stood but a few short feet away, he no longer knew what words to speak. How to offer up his heart to one who could barely tolerate his presence? Was there even love left to claim? So great was the emotion in his heart, the remorse for his precipitous actions, that he would have hungrily feasted on any crumb of Galion's affection. But he wanted more, so much more, than the crumbs alone. Though the thing he most wanted was the thing for which he had least right to ask. Thus, his tongue faltered.

"I…How did you come to injure your hand?"

A small smirk gave him hope.

"Lifting burning limbs from a prostrated Marchwarden is not so pleasant a chore as one might think."

Haldir dared an uneven smile in return. "It was once no chore at all for you to keep your own heated limbs on a prostrated Marchwarden."

Galion's incipient grin cooled and Haldir rushed to rectify the jest which had clearly overreached what the healer could bear.

"I am sorry. That was too familiar. I regret you were injured on my behalf."

"It would not be the first time, and no doubt it will not be the last," the breeziness of his tone accentuated the harshness of his words and Haldir winced. Galion straightened his shoulders and looked to his bandaged hand. "It is my body's nature to heal. No doubt my wounds will have vanished in another day or so."

"Forgive me, Galion," Haldir blurted out all at once, before the Elf could turn aside from him again. "I have grievously erred. All I feared, all I wished to forestall, came to pass despite my action. Or rather, because I failed to act."

"I seem to recall you acted quite decisively." The healer's voice was sharp, his patience depleted and the pain of barely-scabbed hurts rose up within him to plague him anew.

"Aye, but the wrong action!" Haldir pushed himself up to sitting. "Hear me out. I understand what message the Mirror had for me: it revealed to me the trials I would face and bade me make ready for them. I should have availed myself of your love, of your strength. No more powerful weapon could I have commanded on the field than my soul fortified by its mate. I should not have pushed you away,_sadron_, but cleaved to you more tightly."

A derisive noise rattled in Galion's throat. "Faithful one. Ah, yes. Ever present to weather your faults and follies. Something to be picked up at need and set aside on a whim."

"'Twas no whim and well you know it," Haldir charged back. "I feared for my brother's life. I have begged your forgiveness and will continue to do so as long as I might, but I know not how else to atone, to rebuild what I have, through misapprehension, destroyed. Tell me how to make amends to you."

The rage in Galion's expression diminished, but not the hurt. He surveyed the terrain of Haldir's chest and the scar that marred it. His fingertips tingled with the memory of the wound, of healing it, and of tracing its shape on bed-warmed skin. Each digit could summon unbidden the sensation of that cherished hide beneath them. He curled his traitorous hands into fists. "You had no faith in me. You put your trust in a vision, but not in the one that unstintingly loved you."

"It was my own heart I did not trust. I have never doubted you, not once in all the long years of my life. Nor did I cease to love you. If you believe nothing else, believe that."

Haldir would have leapt up to pull the healer into his arms except for the unseemly spectacle an unclothed Marchwarden flying from his cot would have caused. But he was not above displaying his nakedness to his best advantage, hoping that if Galion's heart was slow to thaw, perhaps inciting other parts of him might speed them toward some sort of reconciliation. Dire times called for dire measures, and he would gladly sacrifice the silver of his pride for the gold of Galion's renewed regard.

_Nay_, he reminded himself. _It is not merely his renewed regard I desire, nor the incitement of his body. I would have nothing less than his whole heart._

Unpremeditated words surged from him with the compulsion of a floodtide; too swift, too fierce, too implacable, to be suppressed.

"Bind yourself to me. Do as I should have done long ago and set this aright."

Galion's jaw fell uselessly open. Shortly thereafter, his face took on a look of perfect stupefaction.

Then he roared.

"Are you mad? I think it was not your legs that were seared, but your brain, fool! You cannot think for an instant that I would even consider such a rash and senseless demand from you!"

He remembered himself and his eyes darted frantically around the tent to see how great a disturbance this absurd exchange had caused. Some of the other healers were watching him curiously, but turned quickly away when they noted his eyes upon them. In the next cot, Rúmil continued to sleep the deep and oblivious slumber of healing.

"I cannot fathom where you find the wherewithal to suggest such folly," he hissed angrily, "or the audacity to denigrate the very idea of a sacred bond, but this is neither the time nor the place for any such discussion."

But Haldir would be neither dissuaded nor denied. "You came to me when I most needed you. You love me still."

"I came to you because it was my duty to do so!"

"Any other could have come in your stead if it were merely a question of duty. But it was you who came to me. Admit you love me still."

The tell-tale crease began to show itself on Galion's brow. He had only ever lied once to Haldir, and that was to shield him from Elemmakil's neglect when he lay gravely wounded. He could not lie to him now. He grudgingly murmured:

"Impertinent knave. Do not make me tell you what you already know full well."

"Then take me for your own! I have failed deplorably already. Do not compound my error with your obstinacy."

Galion's eyes glinted furiously, the color of tempered steel. The gall! Only one Elf would even dare suggest that he bore some responsibility for their current straits…and only one Elf could make a marriage proposal ring stridently as a field command. He could not countenance that arrogant insinuation a moment longer. It was so keenly true to form and so utterly maddening. It was so utterly _Haldir._

"I mean to make you mine, healer."

Haldir could see the muscles working in the darkling Elf's jaw. He was seething. He turned brusquely away and removed himself from the pavilion. Haldir cared not. Anger was far easier to suffer than indifference. Anger meant he still stood a chance. 

* * *

Galion avoided him assiduously for the remainder of his time in the infirmary tent, but Haldir did not mind. He had renewed hope, and he clung to it as tenaciously as a leaf to a mallorn branch. Before dawn, he carefully dressed himself in the uniform that had been delivered and strapped on his weapons. Though his legs, now blistered as Galion had promised, screamed at the friction of his breeches against the bandages and the bandages against the wounds, he could stay abed no longer.

Walking stiffly out of the tent, he saw his healer bent at a stream, fetching fresh water and he stalked over on silent feet. When Galion stood and turned he startled to find Haldir just a step away. Water sloshed over the sides of the basin and soaked his sleeves. The acquisitive gleam in the Marchwarden's eye raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck.

"I have shed many illusions of late, and one of which is the witless notion that I could ever bear to be parted from you. I will ask only once more: Bind yourself to me. When this battle ends…if it should end… find me in our old accustomed place and give me your answer."

With that, he turned and made for his patrol's camp with pained strides, leaving Galion stunned and speechless at the water's edge. 

* * *

What little joy Haldir had mustered through his exchange with his estranged beloved was crushed when he saw the damage the balefire had done to Lorien's borders. Groves of ancient, stately trees, from common spruce to mighty mallorn had been reduced to twisted black stumps. Smoke still rose from scorched earth, and still Dol Guldur pressed on, abandoning their siege from across the Anduin only when there was nothing left within their reach to burn, though the engines on the Gladden Fields rolled perilously closer. Once more Celeborn demanded the defensive line be drawn back, and once more Haldir relayed his orders down the greatly foreshortened patrols. The Galadhrim held, but barely.

On the end of the third day, the enemy forces withdrew to their dark places, leaving Lorien and her people reeling. None spoke of ruin, for still they stood even as the beloved trees before them fell; but the line of the dead, many horribly burned and more than a few granted mercy from the flames at the hands of friends and brothers, stretched far too long, and in looking upon them, it was difficult not to feel anything but insurmountable loss.

"Bury them," Celeborn directed. "They have seen enough of fire."

Haldir squatted amid the blackened wreckage and clung ever tighter to the hope that Galion would come to him. As he looked at the waste his land and people had become, that hope seemed the only bright thing left to him. He reached down and trailed his fingers through the cinders and the taste of ashes was bitter on his tongue. It was the taste of defeat. All around him, the morning dew glistened on the bodies of the dead like tears.

Notes: Marnie was generous enough to let me use some of her battle strategies from her epic saga The Battle of The Golden Wood. In this chapter, I must give her credit for the idea of Dol Guldur using siege engines and balefire against the Lorien. The Battle of The Golden Wood is truly one of, if not the most, compelling and beautifully crafted stories I have ever read in this fandom, and it is an absolute must-read for all lovers of Lothlorien-fic. I am truly grateful that such a talented authoress was so gracious in letting me poach from her tale to augment my own humble offerings.


	12. Chapter 12

**Third Age 3019, 54 ****_Echuir_**

Either the sun had not risen, else it hid behind the clouds draping the forest and vale like thick smoke. In the distance, the sky over Oroduin looked as if it were sucking the very firmament into its maw, drawing all light into its vortex. It was not only the dearth of sun that marked this day ominous; the clamor of the Yrch armies had for two days been a dissonant and ceaseless cacophony. In Lorien, however, the silence was uncanny; no birds sang, no animals foraged, and the Elves spoke little. The forest held a collective breath.

The latest battle had begun two nights past, and it had not gone well for the Galadhrim. With their borders burned, the archers had neither the cover nor height required for their assaults. They sent arcing volleys from the ground that sang across the divide, but their defenses had been dealt a devastating blow, and their efforts had done naught but temporarily push the enemy back. The trebuchets still stood, and they would be in range of Caras Galadhon by nightfall. Worse yet, the engines had been primed to spring, and even stopped short of their goal they would bring devastation untold. Each sortie had been costly, yet every foot they drove back the foe was a foot they could not afford to lose anew. It appeared that Dol Guldur had succeeded in this, at least: the Galadhrim no longer had any choice but to ride to battle on the Gladden Fields. Yet still there was hope, however slim: of the Nazgûl there had been no sign (more trouble for Gondor, Celeborn surmised) and with sunrise the second day came word that Thranduil's forces had repelled the attack on the Greenwood, though with no victory there, Dol Guldur had turned its eye full on Lorien.

Celeborn once again amassed a cavalry on the wastes. On his command, Haldir had left others to take charge of the remaining archers and swordsmen at the battle's onset. He now rode at the head of one mounted regiment, and Feredir another. The ancient Elf-Lord, arrayed in mithril plate glowing with equally ancient magic, took the central vanguard. Despite his expertise with a bow, Celeborn was a son of Doriath, and he carried a halberd received from his sire during Elu Thingol's reign, its damascened blade backed with a cruelly edged hook that could unhorse a man and slit his throat in two swift jerks. He would not allow yet another of his beloved homes fall.

The horses balked at the scent of scorched trees and flesh and moved restively on fire-warmed ground. Even the whisper of Elvish voices did little to calm them; they knew death when they smelled it. Celeborn's charger tossed his head impatiently, switching his weight from foot to foot, and he absently rubbed his knuckles against the horse's twitching withers. This animal was unfamiliar between his legs; the stallion that had faithfully served him for nigh on ten years had been shot out from under him yesterday, the victim of an Uruk's quarrel that had opened a hole in his chest the size of a hen's egg.

The standard of his house stirred little in the stolid air, but still its colors could be seen from afar, a warning and a promise. He turned his head first to one side, then to the other, and in each direction the warriors of Lorien stood at the ready, each Elf a creature of fell beauty and hard discipline.

_Haldir spoke of sacrificing the silver to save the gold, but there is no silver here; each life forfeited for our cause is no less brilliant than gold, no less costly than mithril. _

* * *

Haldir tugged at his cloak, pushing the red wool back over his shoulders. Gone were the greys of the hidden sentries and march-walkers. The Galadhrim had mustered in full panoply, and had there been sun to greet them, it would have blazed brilliantly across their cuirasses. Beneath greaves and breeches Haldir's legs sang a song of constant misery. The blisters had burst, leaving raw, pink skin to chafe against his bandages with every step. Gripping the barrel of a horse was little better, but he counted himself lucky and thought on his brother still abed with his knitting bones, and on those whose bodies lay now beneath the earth.

"It has been a long time since we have stood together on the field, you and I."

The voice made him snap his head around, sounding, as it did, so very much like Rúmil's. Orophin edged his sorrel gelding shoulder to shoulder with Haldir's grey, grinning impishly at the momentary stutter of his brother's composure.

"Indeed it has," Haldir replied, heartened, "but I am ever proud to fight at your side."

The shine of Orophin's smile dimmed as he looked out over the field at the seething ranks of the foe beyond. Haldir knew the path his brother's thoughts had taken: Nothing stood between the din-horde and the Golden Wood save these cavalry lines and the remnants of the infantry, brave and valiant all, but outnumbered three to one. If they did not bring down the siege engines, Caras Galadhon would fall to fire, and the realm of Lothlorien would be no more. This was no longer a battle; this was an endgame.

Orophin spoke low, reminding Haldir that their customary benediction had not yet been spoken. "Say you will come back to me, _pen iaur_…"

Joy and sorrow swelled in tandem in Haldir's heart as he took up the old and beloved words. "…Because I do not part from you willingly."

Cocking his head, Orophin observed him thoughtfully through blue eyes slightly narrowed and slowly blinking.

"What are you thinking, _muindor_?" Haldir asked.

The middle son of Guilin drew a breath. "I was thinking that in your red cape and your armor, with that sword on your back and your bow in your hand, you look for all the world like Ada."

Haldir reached out his arm and took his brother's shoulder in a firm grip. Behind his proud smile, fear lurked.

"Come back to me as well, Orophin. It will be no victory without you beside me." 

* * *

The standard-bearer carrying Celeborn's colors raised his staff aloft. With determination in his carriage and a lethal glint in his eyes, the Lord of Lorien raised his voice above the tumult and the Elves took up his call as the vanguard vaulted forward

"Death to the foes of the Golden Wood!"

The forays of the previous days had served their purpose well, even if they had failed to deter the Yrch or bring down the war machines. The evildoers converged in a wedge in the center of the field, staying well clear of the bogs and foothills where their opening assault against the wood had failed. Safely behind the ranks of Orcish foot soldiers and warg-riders, the Cave-trolls plodded on, straining against their harnesses, the trebuchets rolling inexorably behind them. Once in range, the mounted archers let fly and fire was returned. The distance between the lines closed and the clarion call of an Elvish war-horn rang out, a silvery note slicing through the muzzy morning.

When the alarum sounded, Haldir peeled to the right and his echelon followed; behind him, Feredir drew his men left. Crouching low, Haldir urged his mount on, asked the beast to give him all the speed he could, and the horse stretched out his neck and lengthened his stride. Haldir could feel the subtle shift of three beats becoming four, could feel the instantaneous suspension as all four hooves left the ground. The air was clammy on his face as he moved out and ahead. Glancing left, he saw Feredir riding parallel across the field, his men angling inward in an inverted 'v' to the rear guard. The cavalry descended on the Yrch like a steel jaw, wide open and ready to snap down on the prey that filled it. The foemen had not anticipated the crush that now surrounded their narrowed forces, and the flashing Elvish teeth closed around them.

But the Galadhrim had yet more in mind for the blackguards that ravaged their forest. Haldir, Orophin, and a half-dozen men behind detached from the formation and continued to speed ahead, mirrored across the field by Feredir's front riders. While the mainstay of the adversary was engaged, their attention had turned from the siege engines. They were still guarded, but the Elves could not hope for a better opportunity to destroy them. Haldir drew up beside the first machine and called behind him.

"Bring it down!"

He rounded on the wain that followed the trebuchet, its bed laden with clay vessels fragile as bird's eggs and filled with the fire of Dol Guldur. The Easterling driver pulled up his team and swung his flail threateningly over his head as three pairs of sharp blue eyes set him in their sights. Knowing his life forfeit, the Easterling drew back his lips in a cruel rictus and brandished his weapon one last time before letting go. The spiked ball sailed through the air like a comet, the rod and chain following in an arc behind. Haldir ducked instinctively, but the flail was not for him. The Easterling had aimed for his own payload.

There was a split second of stillness before everything around him burst into flame. 

* * *

Though there were still miles between the burnt edge of the forest and the walls of Caras Galadhon, Taurnil could not help but feel that the City of Trees was woefully exposed. He slipped silently between alders and oaks in the scant leagues of unguarded forest standing defiantly outside the Lady's wards. The wards were stronger now, the sole benefit of their forced retreat; she needed no longer stretch her powers to their limit to reach the hithermost marches. In dire times, he thought, better to seek the bright side of each dilemma lest one sink into despair.

"What was that?"

The sharp whisper of his partner pierced the bubble of his ruminations and he looked up.

"Wind in the branches, methinks. I will have a look."

He darted off toward a clump of sycamores, but found nothing. He turned around shrugging, but even as he turned the rush of jostling branches accosted him and he looked up just in time to see a furred form in rapid descent. He leapt out of the way as the Ungol dropped from the sycamore's limbs, landing lightly on the ground despite its vulgar size. The necromancy of Dol Guldur had coddled this creature well, for less than a fortnight had passed since the eggs had been pitched into the forest, and already its dark body had swelled to the size of a boar's.

Taurnil shouted in surprise, stumbling backwards and barely managing to get himself out of the way of the falling spider. The twanging sound of a plucked bowstring heralded an arrow's flight, but the spider was equipped with a queer facility for moving in inconceivable directions. The flights did naught but graze two hairy spindles, prompting an eerie hiss of umbrage. Taurnil was too close to get off a shot himself. He continued scuttling backward, his hand cautiously reaching for his sword. Another bolt sped past his shoulder. This one found its target, the turgid, fleshy abdomen. The Ungol let out a furious shriek, rearing backward and waving its forelegs in a pained rage. It leapt forward, but already its strength had been leached by the wound. A sluggish gout of blood the color of nightshade pulsed onto the ground. Taurnil watched in morbid fascination as the creature stumbled and flailed, eight legs futilely thrashing.

He turned with a cheeky grin. "I shall alert Haldir you are in need of some remedial training. Had your second attempt gone as far astray as your first, I would have been in quite a predicament!"

By the time he heard the movement above him, it was already too late. 

* * *

The grey destrier pulled up short, and Haldir lost his opportunity for a clean shot as the horse swiveled on his hind legs and darted left. It would have made no difference for him had he fired; the Easterling was dead, engulfed in flames. A lake of fire widened across the ground, punctuated with intermittent bangs as the heat shattered the other vessels and the charred shell of the wain collapsed in on itself. The liquid flare flowed down the grade of the land, filling in the runnels left by the war engine's heavy wheels, a trail of flame creeping toward the wood. The firepot held in the trebuchet's sling remained intact, ready.

Most of the Yrch surrounding the machine had fled, their cowardice for once greater than their hatred of the Elves. A few remained, however, and a single arrow from a single enemy was always enough to kill. Haldir turned his head against the blaze and squinted through the shimmering air, his burned legs raging as heat recalled heat. Across the wastes, he could dimly see Feredir and his men closing in on the third engine. Beyond him, Celeborn drove forward at a measured pace. The echelons needed to draw together around the army of Dol Guldur, but their comparatively paltry numbers demanded they destroy as many as possible at a distance first.

Behind him, Haldir's outriders gathered, awaiting his order. He appraised them, red-faced from the heat. "Maethor, Badhor, and Gormegil, with me! Orophin, stay with the others and destroy this thing. Disable it at all cost!"

With his men behind him, he sped toward the middle of the field, where the second engine trundled steadily in range of the wood. 

* * *

_A mere six to take out a war machine guarded by more than a score? This is madness! _

Feredir closed his leg the bay mare and she snorted in commiseration, dropping her head and opening her stride. His men snaked out behind him, firing at will. An Orc-bolt whizzed darkly past his ear and he cursed under his breath, returning an arrow of his own and sneering when his would-be assassin pitched backward off the axle of the trebuchet.

A cry resounded behind him and he did not need to turn to identify the source. He cursed again, louder this time. It was not until he had come around a few strides more that he saw the downed horse and the body of one of his friends crushed beneath it. It galled him—and always had—that warfare did not afford the simple civility of a moment to mark the falling of a friend. His lips curled in a vengeful scowl and he took aim again.

It was an unexpected surprise to find the Yrch so poorly armed. Those who guarded the siege engines wielded mainly swords, pikes, and flails. They relied on the ranged weapons of the forward ranks to shield them. They had not counted on their nemeses assailing them so closely. Even as he watched, one of his men danced easily out of reach of a studded club. 'Tis the only score in our favor, Feredir thought grimly, pulling off a shot that garnered him a hit but no kill. Should the warg-riders turn from their business with Celeborn's men, they would be in dire danger, for a horse could scarce outrun a warg, and horses did not have mouths full of daggers and a taste for blood.

The enraged bellow of the Cave-troll resounded and Feredir craned his head to see the beast swatting at the arrows that bounced uselessly off his green-scaled skin.

"Save your shot!" Feredir's order barely registered over the tumult. "We have no bolts that will prick his hide!"

Then, an idea. "Throw me the end of your rope," he called to the rider beside him, who swiftly slipped the knot of the hithlain coiled at his waist and tossed one end to the lieutenant. It was not as long as he had hoped, but it would serve.

He gestured with a long, lean arm before securing the rope around his waist. The warden looked and nodded, tying his own end tight. Feredir dug his heels into the mare's side, feeling her flinch beneath him as she surged into action. The other Elf waited until Feredir passed in front of the Troll and then sped off in the opposite direction. They passed shoulder to shoulder in front of the Troll's enormous, toeless feet. They rounded back behind the troll and Feredir heard an agonized howl as his partner received an arrow to the thigh for his trouble.

"Do not stop!" he demanded, seeing the warden grimace, one hand on the rope at his middle, the other gripping the shaft in his leg. The horse understood and pressed on, his rider grunting with every stride. They circled again, and the rope tightened around the Troll's ankles.

"Aware! Here it comes!"

A third pass, and the rope had reached its full length. They pulled as best they could, cinching the circles as the Troll raised his back foot to take a step. There was a moment of suspense before the ropes caught and the creature lost his balance, unable to put his hind foot down as the hithlain shackle bound him. He roared, a sound like thunder in the earth's bowels, and Feredir clamped both hands tight around the rope, holding his breath and waiting.

At last, the Troll toppled, and though he was ready for it, the jerk that yanked him from his horse was abrupt and painful. He had envisioned himself landing on his feet, but the stunning force slammed him bodily into the fallen creature's immensely solid leg. He struggled to stand, dazed by the impact, and felt a searing line around his middle where the rope had pulled across his skin. But no matter, it had worked. The Troll had fallen, and even now his men were rounding on it. An Elf with a long spear approached at speed and sent his weapon through the Troll's eye and deep into his brain. The wheels of the trebuchet lurched to a halt and did not roll again.

Nearby, his compatriot was breathing in exquisite pain, his face ashen with shock. He rolled up glassy eyes at the lieutenant.

"Ribs," he rasped, and Feredir nodded, quite certain he was correct—at least a couple of the rider's ribs had been broken when he had collided with the solid wall of Troll. With help, the Elf was moved onto the ground between the dead Troll's legs. There was no time to move him off the field, or to imagine they could do so without being shot dead, and the mountain of unmoving flesh was as good a cover as any.

He had only a moment of smugness to appreciate the success of his scheme. One of his men called to him, and he turned to find an Orc he had shot and left for dead scaling the frame of the engine. A white-fletched arrow stood out between his shoulder blades, but still he crawled, and in his dying moment, threw himself against the trigger-arm of the trebuchet. The Elves cried out, full of fury and horror, but the counterweight dropped with sudden finality and the arm of the engine arced over them, pulling behind it the firepot in its sling. They could do nothing but watch as it hurtled through the air toward the outer flank of Celeborn's cavalry. The ranks broke as riders scattered every which way, but not all of them escaped the conflagration that enveloped the field. The scream of dying horses and Elves was a vile, discordant song.

_We have done what was asked of us_, Feredir reminded himself as he hewed through the ropes and pulleys to permanently disarm the machine. Here was one less engine headed toward the wood. But though he weighed the number of lives saved in Caras Galadhon against the number of his fellows burning before him, and while he knew he had served the greater good, it was a bitter victory, and one bought dear. 

* * *

The archer did not need two shots to take out the second Ungol, but a single arrow flying true was too little, too late for Taurnil. The creature's stinger had still found the soft flesh of his stomach and pierced him like a blade even as it made the high-pitched whine signaling its death.

Taurnil's body responded instinctively, the last of his strength spent pushing the dying thing off of him. He vomited, tried to rise, but his legs went out from under him and he crawled jerkily, his limbs no longer responding to his body's commands. Beneath him, the blood of the Ungol pooled in an oily slick on the surface of the ground; the earth refusing to drink its poison.

"Be still!" his partner exhorted, a note of panic turning his voice shrill. "Be still, friend!"

Taurnil saw the Elf's lips move, saw the leaf mould kicked up in his wake as he bounded away in search of a healer, yet he heard naught but a distant hum. He opened and closed his fingers in weaker and weaker fists but he could no longer feel them, could no longer feel his legs, and his body grew cold and colder, as if dunked in the Bay of Forochel. At the last, he could move no longer. He collapsed on the ground, his eyes turned skyward.

He could not say (for he could not speak) how much time had passed when, with dimming sight, he saw Galion's face above him. He closed his eyes and smiled. 

* * *

The Troll plodded forward with mindless steps, any sign of slowing bringing an immediate lash from the Orc who menaced him from the frame of the trebuchet.

"Take out the rest of the escort," Orophin directed, lining up a shot even as he spoke. Only a few Yrch remained, and if they were conquered while Celeborn's men engaged the others, they stood a chance of success.

A terrific roar raised his head, and he watched the far side of the field explode in a red-orange burst and a symphony of screams, at least a score of warriors and horses vanishing in the sudden flames. His nostrils flared reflexively and he spared a moment to thank the stars his wife had gone over the sea, though in that moment he would have done anything, anything, to feel her presence in his mind, to feel the rhythm of his heart strengthened by hers. He pushed the thought aside and turned his focus to the matter at hand.

The lash-wielder had dropped his whip and was scrambling now for the back of the machine, reaching for the lever that would loose the arm. Either he saw the first engine shoot and thought he had been ordered to fire, or he saw the futility of his position and sought to make his end as murderous as possible; it made no difference which. Orophin was drawing back his bowstring when one of the others let fly a shot that toppled the Orc off the engine. With the Troll's next step, the rear wheels rolled over him, severing his legs below the knees, black blood welling up on the ground ere the spreading balefire touched it and set it, and the Orc, to burning.

Finally, they had the machine free and clear. Orophin rode up close beside it, careful to stay out of the Troll's line of vision. He swung his leg over his horse and dropped easily onto the axle. With squirrel-like agility, he shimmied up the pole-arm. The counterweight was far too heavy for him to trip the machine thusly. He pulled his dagger from his belt and sawed at the ropes of the basket. It dismayed him to find that Orcish cord was near as strong as hithlain and just as hard to sever, but he persevered. One by one, the strands gave way and the ropes began to unravel.

Below him, one of the others was shouting. "Come away! Come away before it snaps!"

Hearing the groan of the strained fibers, Orophin slipped back down the arm and vaulted back onto his horse, steering the animal away from the engine as the final strands began to break. He waited.

Nothing. Though the basket swung precariously, the firepot did not fall. The Troll trudged on.

He pulled an arrow from his quiver and took aim, but he could hardly see the joint of the ropes. He shot, and the arrow pitched wide. He cursed and aimed again. Another miss.

_Rúmil would drub me for my poor showing_, he considered ruefully, exhaling in a slow, steady stream. He slipped another bolt on the string.

I will not miss, he silently promised, and loosed the string. 

* * *

"Taurnil!"

Galion dropped to his friend's side, wiping beads of sweat like blisters from cooling skin. He prized open the Elf's eyelids and found the orbs beneath cloudy and pale, as if a caul had slipped over them. A dark stain showed on his belly where the Ungol's sting had entered him. It was a small wound, nothing compared to what an arrow might have done.

Yet it is enough, Galion inwardly moaned.

Milky purge frothed on the Galadhel's lips now and his body convulsed, back arching hard as if his spine would snap in twain, hands twisting up like claws.

"I can do nothing for him here," the healer barked at the warden. "Help me carry him."

Though his body was not heavy, they stumbled as they ran. 

* * *

Above, the clouds swirled threatening and grim and Haldir almost expected to be sucked skyward by some foul updraft. Fires raged bright ahead of him and bright behind, and still one siege engine remained, lurching forward toward his homeland with the Troll's every stride. Badhor and Gormegil were two of his best archers (though Rumil's sure skills were sorely missed) and they had dispatched the enemy envoy with ease. The Cave-troll, however, proved impervious to their arrows; it did not so much as growl as the bolts bounced off his hide. The chains binding him to his task were beyond their means to break, and thus the trebuchet was not so much a burden to the thrall as an extension of his enormous body, a tail carried behind.

A lethal tail, at that: a wain loaded with firepots had been chained to the rear axle. It would be no simple matter of killing an Easterling to stop the forward progress of this lumbering inferno. The gap between Celeborn's men and his own was closing rapidly. If he did not strike now, he risked destroying dozens, maybe hundreds, of warriors, for if the firepots exploded or the machine was triggered, the cavalry would be too close to escape.

His only plan seemed precipitous and foolhardy, but he hardly had other options. Pressing his gelding up beside the trebuchet, he leaped onto the front axle, grabbing the Troll's chain for balance. A slap to the backside was signal enough for the horse to move well clear of him. He steadied himself and unsheathed his sword. Even in the storm-dark of the battle plain it gleamed, hungry for blood.

_You have served my house well, friend,_ he spoke silently to his blade. _Serve me again today. Aid me in the keeping of my vow. _

As it had on the eve of the first battle, the inscription on the blade appeared limned in blue light, and Haldir was encouraged. He wasted not a moment more, but took three precarious steps up the taut links harnessing the Troll to the engine. The Troll's back was scored with oozing stripes where the hide had been laid open by an Orc-lash, and it was at one such raw site that he aimed his first jab.

Haldir barely managed to maintain his balance on the chain when the Troll roared and jerked. Another jab and the enraged beast turned, a cloud of fecal breath preceding its outraged bellow. It took a swipe with a meaty fist, but Haldir leapt from the chain back to the axle and ducked the blow, ducked again, before daring another slash at the wounded skin. The Troll stopped in his tracks and craned its head around, seeking its tormentor with dim eyes. Out of reach now, Haldir nocked an arrow and drew back, aiming for a particularly cruel wound high between the monster's shoulder blades. Though the arrow did not stick in the skin, it clearly aggravated the injury, for a shudder rolled slowly up the mountainous back followed by more noises of rage.

The Troll reversed his path, following Haldir's retreat with thunderous steps and Haldir jumped back onto the ground, fearing that if the Troll struck the trebuchet, the jolt of it might cause the machine to fire. He edged backward, staying only barely out of range of the Troll's furious blows. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Maethor riding close behind.

"Go!" Haldir's voice sliced like a blade through the din. "Get away from the wain!"

Maethor did not even nod, simply pulled his mount left and sped ahead to where Bathor and Gormegil rode hard toward the Eastern side.

Cautiously, with a step light as a wren's, Haldir climbed the side of the wain and stepped into the wagon bed. The clay eggs rattled against each other as the assembly rolled over the uneven terrain. A momentary loss of balance, a misplaced foot, and he might shatter a vessel and make of himself a living torch. He took a breath and thought of Galion.  
He knew his next deed might be accomplished at the cost of his life, and though he rued the thought of it, there was naught to be done but make good on his oath that he would extinguish his own light that the light of Lorien might burn on.

He took his shot. The arrow lodged in the creature's eye, and the sound of his pain and fury was terrible to hear. He charged toward Haldir with fists swinging and Haldir crouched, swallowing hard. He waited until those furious fists loomed above him, ready to crash down upon his head, and when they began to fall, he leapt.

Even as he closed his eyes, it seemed as though the clouds had cleared, and he hoped with a fervid desperation that the fleeting glimpse of blue he caught through tightening lids would not be his final glimpse of sky. Already his burns were screaming in anticipation of the fire to come. 

* * *

Celeborn jerked the point of his halberd out of the warg's gaping mouth, a red spume erupting behind. The echelons had closed around the ranks of Dol Guldur and the column of foemen had splintered under the slam of the Galadhrim trap. All sense of order was lost now, a melee remaining, a dread chorus of blades and screams filling the air around him. He had seen at a distance the destruction of one trebuchet where it stood, and a second stripped into uselessness, though only after it had unleashed its fatal ammunition. The losses from immolation on the field had been hard to stomach, but they were a fraction of what might had been had the engine rolled another league further.

Now he saw the last of the engines as it fell. Strange… it seemed as if the giant thrall that hauled it had gone mad, had begun to break the firepots with angry blows. The balefire caught light and roared into blazing life, oily flames leaping across the Troll's arms and chest, spreading over its body. Crazed with terror and pain, the beast had tried to flee, making in clumsy haste toward the Anduin, dragging the trebuchet and the flaming wain behind.

_Water will not aid you, stupid creature_, Celeborn thought with a mixture of pity and animus. Sure enough, the Troll jumped into the rushing river, but the flames that cloaked him were not extinguished. The weight of the wagon and the trebuchet pulled him under to drown as he burned, greasy flickers dancing on the surface to mark his passage down and away toward Rauros' mighty falls.

A shiver seized him, shook its way down his spine and left fine hairs standing erect beneath his armor in its wake. Something had happened. He let his mind reach out, a silver thread, to the Mirror grove, and as that strand of his sentience drew into the woods, he found that he did not feel the prickling resistance of his Lady's wards. Panic filled him.

_Fear not, beloved_, came the answer he sought, lighter than eiderdown. _It is done. Splendor of Eru, it is done. _

Halberd in hand, absently thrusting at an Uruk-Hai soldier, he could hardly even begin to fathom her meaning.

_The wards?_

Fallen. Nenya's power is no more. 

This, too, was blessed news to him; long had they required the Ring of Adamant to strengthen and shield them, but he had never wished his wife to bear a Ring of Power, and he had not a single tear to weep for its loss. His Lady read this from his silence, for she had no more to say. There would be time for words later. There would be time.

A rider—one of Feredir's men, though Celeborn could not see who- broke away from the phalanx and sped toward the place the last engine had stood when the Troll had wreaked his havoc. Only then did he spy a dash of red, a Marchwarden's cloak, spread like a pool of blood across the ground. 

* * *

Feredir pressed his horse, fingers of one hand knotted tight in a shock of dark mane. Ahead of him, he could see the Marchwarden rolling painfully to his hands and knees. Though his leap had been perfectly timed, the force of the blast had sent him sailing and his landing had been brutal. Even now, he was unsteady on his feet as he struggled to stand, and, dazed, dropped back to his knees.

Feredir called Haldir's name once, and the Elf looked up just in time to see his lieutenant barreling towards him, arm extended. He struggled to his feet once more and reached, letting the momentum of the horse's stride propel him up and onto her back. He slumped in relief against Feredir, anchoring himself at his law-brother's waist as he shook off the last of his dizziness.

"Yet again I have cause to thank you for handing me my life," he shouted against the wind. He felt Feredir's body jerk in a scoff.

"I do not save you for your own sake, you know," Feredir returned with mock severity. "Rúmil would cast me out of his bed if I did not return you alive. I serve my only my own interests in this."

Haldir laughed, though his battered ribs and back chastened him for it, and clapped a hand on Feredir's thigh. All around him, the enemy were scattering, Men and Yrch looking less fearsome now, and more frantic. Only the Uruk-Hai seemed indifferent to the chaos and dedicated to their violence.

_What luck is this_, Haldir wondered. _Is this a retreat? Do they finally flee from us? _

"Are you fit to ride or do you need a healer?" Feredir asked him.

An image of Galion flitted through his head and he forced it back. "I need only my horse," he said. 

* * *

Once more astride his grey gelding's back, it became clear to Haldir that some monumental change had occurred.

"Sauron has fallen!" Celeborn's voice held a note of unfettered joy Haldir had never before heard it carry, and it energized him. "The One Ring has been destroyed!"

The Galadhrim sent up cheers as suddenly their foe became desperate and craven. The trebuchets destroyed, it was now simply Elf against Orc, against Uruk, and against Man, and Haldir set out to dispatch the remainders with glee.

A ferocious noise signaled the death match of two wargs. Their riders downed, they had no commands to obey and turned on each other with snarling alacrity. To the West, Feredir had rejoined his men and they drove scores of Yrch into the marshes, hunting them down and slaughtering them as they fled.

And thus, the final push on the Gladden Fields was made. His arrows expended, Haldir slipped from his mount's back and bid him make haste for the forest where he might rest his brave and weary bones. He drew his sword and waded into the fray, spilling the blood of each creature who challenged him with a fearlessness that bordered on cavalier.

He found Badhor with an Orc who as yet seemed unwilling to concede defeat. He moved to assist his comrade when something caught his eye. There, dangling from the creature's crude armor, was a long, pale braid, a thick plait of Elvish hair clotted with blood and filth. He knew on sight what it was. Or, rather, whose: the hair belonged to Estadion, the sentry whose throat had been slit in the pines, whose locks had been cruelly shorn by his killer. Estadion, the first man to die on Haldir's watch.

Engaged as he was with Badhor, the Orc did not sense Haldir's proximity until the Marchwarden dealt a blow to his sword-hand that knocked away his scimitar and lopped off his first two fingers. He howled, black blood jetting from the stumps. Haldir grabbed a handful of coarse, grimy hair in his fist and jerked the Orc's head back, pressing his dagger tight against his throat.

"Mercy, Lord Elf," the foeman screeched, "you have me prisoner, show mercy!"

Haldir chuckled darkly as he saw the Orc's hand move with attempted stealth toward his own dagger.

"Nay, I think not," he crooned softly. "You showed him no mercy." With that, he opened the Orc's throat, drenching the ground at his feet in a torrent of inky swill. He released his grip and let his lifeless body fall, wiping the filth on his breeches. He yanked the braid from the corpse. He would weave Estadion's hair into his bowstrings so that each shot would carry his sentry's revenge. Sometimes, there was simply no room for mercy.

Across the battle plain, victory cries rose like a new dawn. It was over; the mighty Galadhrim had won.

_Soon_, he told himself. _You will see him soon, and you will know his heart. _

For though the battle was over, Haldir had a private victory yet to claim. 

* * *

_Come, Taurnil_, Galion sent silent thoughts to his fallen friend. _Defy Mandos with your laugher! _

A buxom young healer pushed him brusquely aside and swabbed Taurnil's brow with single-minded dedication.

_Do you not hear the singing? It is over. You have won! I would hear your voice rise with the others, dear friend. _

"Oh, Taurnil…"

He had spoken aloud this time, and the _elleth_ looked at him disdainfully.

"I might better care for him if you were not in the way," she sniped, and turned her back waspishly to make a poultice of comfrey and rue. Galion took two steps back, but did not leave the tent.

_You offered me love that I was a fool to decline. I had a sterling heart that was mine for the asking, yet my own heart was given to a fool. _

The pointed clearing of a feminine throat brought his eyes back into focus.

"There are others who need your assistance, Galion. I will keep watch over Taurnil."

It took him a moment to understand he was being dismissed. He watched the healer stroke Taurnil's face and discerned there was little of healing in that touch, and much of a different sort of tenderness. His heart seized just a little, out of surprise, and also out of jealousy, and remorse that he could never find it in himself to claim what his friend had offered.

Outside the tent, there were other wounded, other dead. He helped where he could, feeling that all around him the joy of victory was tempered by the devastation of loss. He worked long into the night, and into dawn the next day, and all the while he was haunted. He knew Haldir lived, had seen him moving among the wounded. He rejoiced at that first sight of him: bloody, ragged, his red cloak torn and singed, yet the sight of him also made his stomach clench, for he had not forgotten what Haldir had asked of him, had not forgotten the choice that lay before him.

He had not forgotten, and for all the world, he did not know what he would do.

Notes: Once again, I am beholden to Marnie for some of the conventions found in this chapter—namely, the trebuchets (once again), and the idea of a cavalry of archers. I will say again: I am spoiled that she allowed me such free rein with her work, and I cannot recommend her own writing enthusiastically enough. A word about dates: The three attacks on Lorien came on March 11th, 15th, and 22nd, and I have used the dates as given in the Tale of Years, rather than their modern equivalent, and then converted them to the Reckoning of Rivendell as per the Encyclopedia of Arda. However, some discrepancies appear in the Encyclopedia regarding dates, so I ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt and chalk up any discrepancies here as a touch of artistic license.


	13. Chapter 13

**Third Age 3019, ****_Yestarë_**

The battle was over, and the Elves had won.

Despite the astounding violence of Mordor's armies, the Hobbit had succeeded, the Ring of Power had been unmade, and Sauron had been vanquished. The long shadow hanging over the land lifted at last.

The enemy withdrew from the Gladden Fields, but for the Galadhrim, the aftermath remained: tending to their wounded, assessing their losses, burying their dead. And still Dol Guldur stood, a canker on the green across the Anduin. Celeborn would see it brought down, but for the moment, a reprieve: two days to lay the fallen in the earth (no more pyres; fire had brought enough pain) and to recover their strength. Two days to prepare for one final stand.

Haldir ached for their losses, for the terrible deaths of the brave and the worthy. He had held vigil over Taurnil, who lingered between life and death with Ungol poison choking his veins. He buried friends with his own hands, and it was back-breaking, heart-breaking work. Through it all he had worn an indomitable face until he heard Rúmil's voice rise up with Feredir's to sing a lament for the warriors fallen, and then he had scarce been able to stem the tide of his grief.

And yet, one thought remained: that soon he would go to the hidden place where long ago two young ones had claimed the land as their own. And there, amidst the stands of birch and alder, amid the briar tangle which had once sheltered two small bodies, he would wait for Galion and receive the answer to his suit.

The sun was setting and still the laments for the lost lingered in his ears. He had painstakingly scrubbed the blood and filth from his body, though the hot water made his legs squall with outrage. Agonizing over how he might best present himself, he had settled at last on the grey velvet vest he considered the most handsome piece in his wardrobe and a fine linen shirt opened at the neck as far as decorum would allow. His breeches were snug suede of a darker hue, his boots carefully cleaned. He wore his hair unbound and oiled and had even daubed a bit of scent behind his ears, though now, standing alone by the side of the water, he felt foolish for his vanity. He knew from the hue of the sky that he had been there for some time, and still Galion had not shown. His hands worried the leather of his belt, looking for occupation as the knot in his stomach grew.

He acknowledged now with growing despair that he might finally have overreached himself; that the pain he had brought through his stunning lack of insight could perhaps not be allayed. His heart raced, the hollow sound echoing around his companionless self and the solitary trees, and he felt light-headed with the magnitude of his failure: He was forsaken, then. He had lost Galion; he was to be alone.

Legs going liquid beneath him, he leaned against the poplar whose branches had often cradled him, needful of its support. He wanted to run from this place, never again to see the remains of the brush fort that had once been an enclave for him, but at present he felt too ill to move.

_In a moment_, he told himself. _I need only catch my breath and I shall be gone from here._

"Haldir."

His name was spoken so quietly, he was afraid perhaps it was just a mocking breeze. Yet when he turned, the healer was there, regarding him with an uneasy expression.

Haldir was silent for some time before speaking. "I was afraid you would not come."

"I did not know if I would," Galion told him simply.

"Yet here you are."

Galion had also taken care to dress himself well, and his dark locks, freed from their customary braid, swept the small of his back. He looked down at his feet. "Haldir, this is no small thing you ask."

Revived, Haldir was in motion, closing the distance between them. "Nay, it is a grand thing! It is the moon and the sun and the stars!" He dared to reach forward and take hold of the healer's arm. He was not rebuffed. "I know this, Galion. I know it is no small thing, but my love is no small thing, either."

Still, Galion looked ill at ease. "You have ever sworn you would not marry and now you would rush headlong into betrothal. What of me, then, when you regain your senses and rue your hasty action? I could not endure an eternity of regret."

"I will not regret it! I regret only that I caused you pain, and that I held you at arm's length when I should have kept you near. I regret that I broke with you when I should have been binding myself to you."

Galion was silent, considering. His head was cocked, and there, the old crease of worry cleaved his brow and his lips were drawn tight as he regarded Haldir indirectly from the corner of his eye. Haldir stepped close again, venturing light touches to his shoulders, his arms, his face.

"I cannot offer you much, for I have little. I am a faulty creature, as well you know. I dare not swear our road will be an easy one, nor can I promise a life of leisure or of riches."

"You sell it well," Galion remarked dryly.

"What I do have is the words in my heart, the vow I would speak, and a blade to see the deed done."

It took a moment for those final words to register, but when they did, Galion's eyes bulged, and he sputtered wildly before finding his voice. "_Now_? Have you lost your mind?"

"Nay, I have found my heart, and it will not wait. I will not wait."

"And if I refuse, what then?"

Haldir had rediscovered his confidence. His prize was in sight, and it would not escape him again. "You will not refuse. When I said I would make you mine, it was neither a jest nor a threat. It was merely a statement of fact."

Galion bristled, his nostrils flaring. Any Elf possessing a modicum of good sense would not tolerate such a galling declaration.

But any Elf possessing a modicum of good sense would not have tolerated Haldir, his arrogance, and his ambivalence, for all these many years.

"You rebuked me, saying I had no faith in you." Haldir spoke softly this time and kept his distance. "Show me now what it is to have faith."

Galion jerked his hand through his hair and turned aside, his body a taut line curling in on itself at the shoulder. Before him lay the singing stream, behind him the place where their little brush fort once stood, reclaimed now by gorse and fern. He thought of all the years that he had wanted nothing more than this, and the torment that was Haldir dancing forever just beyond his reach, taunting him now with a whirlwind promise of forever. He vehemently shook his head. This was madness, utter and complete.

He took a breath before speaking.

Haldir saw the slow shaking of Galion's head and the movement of his lips around a quiet word he could not hear. The rejection hit him with all the force of a punch to the gut. His mind swam with the cruelty of it, and he feared for a humiliating moment that he would be ill. He took an unsteady step back, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs, disturbing the nap of the suede. So stricken was he by this gesture of refusal, this silent denial, that the hum of devastation in his ears nearly deafened him to Galion's voice.

"Strip."

"What did you say?" asked Haldir, unable to credit his ears.

"Strip, I said," the healer demanded again, turning sharply to face him. "That is how it is done, is it not? Lovers bare themselves to one another as a token of good faith, that nothing is concealed and nothing stands between them?"

Already Galion's hands were twisting at the fibula of his cloak, letting it fall in a careless heap on the ground. His eyes were hard as adamant, yet shining wildly, and he tugged impatiently at his belt.

"Well?" he prodded, toeing off his boots and shoving his breeches roughly down his legs.

Haldir only stared, momentarily struck dumb by the turn of events. He worried his lower lip between his teeth as he watched Galion disrobing, each jerk of his limbs tinged with exasperation. He looked with startled and astonished eyes, as if he had never truly seen Galion before, never fully appreciated the lean sculpt of his chest, the graceful line of his neck and shoulders, the high arch of his cheekbones.

"You are beautiful."

Galion's expression softened, the challenge fading from his eyes. "And you are still clothed, _seron vell_."

_Beloved. _

Haldir was radiant in his joy. He pulled his dagger from its sheath and placed it on the ground at his feet, and then hastily undressed under Galion's warming gaze. Naked at last, they faced each other. Though as the crucial moment dawned, a shadow of unease flickered across Haldir's face.

"I would do this now, but Galion, if you are at all unsure I will wait; your word is bond enough. Patience is not a quality inherent to my nature, but for you I would perforce learn it."

Galion shook his head, pressing his hand to Haldir's cheek. "I have never been more sure of anything." He did not blink when he locked his gaze on Haldir, fixed and final.

They knelt then, there on the velvet of the moss, blind to all but each other. With clasped hands, they whispered the words that wrought the solemn vow of binding, the arcane invocations known only to Firstborn and spoken between true lovers since the awakening on Cuiviénen's shores.

Haldir picked up the knife and drew it swiftly across his palm, reveling in the sharp sting, in the sight of his blood blossoming in the wake of steel's passage. He held out the dagger to Galion, who did not so much as wince as he opened the flesh of his own palm and held it up, a garnet trickle flowing down toward his wrists.

In silence, they brought their hands together, fingers twining, and each felt the earth beneath them shifting, so swiftly did the surge of the bind come upon them. Above, though they did not see, the stars briefly flared, a sign that their call to Ilúvatar had been heard and their compact accepted. Between their hands, a current deluged them: blood sang to blood, heart answered heart, and two became inexorably one.

Galion's eyes rolled up behind his lids and a low moan escaped him. The feeling of being drawn into Haldir and of Haldir being drawn into him was at once alien and sensual. It reminded him of healing, of sending himself deep within another, seeking the utmost limit of that fine thread which bound his soul to his body. But there was no limit here, no point of parting, no fear of becoming unmoored from himself and lost in empty darkness. For now, as he felt himself being pulled outward to his mate, Haldir was bourn to him, the misty tendrils of the warrior's spirit filling him, completing him. He could feel the weight and unearthly heat of Haldir's body; they had slumped against each other in the dizzying onslaught, each bearing the other up as their _faer_ mingled within and between them.

Haldir was open to him, all his love made plain in the sweat scent of his skin, the touch of his hand, the thrum of his blood; he withheld nothing. Galion did not demure at showing what lay in his own heart, the love that had resided their for years uncounted, the surety of emotion that remained through all of Haldir's mercurial phases and through his own pain and doubt which only now began to recede once and for all.

Breath passed between them and they drank it in, each from the other. They were deafened by the roar of blood pounding in their veins, the thunder of hearts seeking, and finally, _finally_, finding synchrony. They discovered the tingle of skin now aware of every touch, the resident warmth of fingers. The pulse of their hands echoed the rhythm of twinned hearts and a deeper throb answered below, the sudden and compelling need for closeness beyond this mere touch; the desperation to share their bodies as they now shared all else. He did not need to see to know that they were both powerfully aroused by the urgent summoning of flesh to flesh.

Galion's breath became a gasp, a harsh pant. He could no more deny himself his desire than he could conceal the love he carried within. He would see himself sated, glutted on Haldir's flesh. His growl of need reverberated between them as he drew Haldir down beside him on the cool green, and with his free hand drew Haldir's head to his and fused their mouths together.

Haldir melted under his kiss. How could it have been but a short few months since he had last received this when it felt like a thousand parched and barren years? It was as a feast to one starving. He might have spent from the sheer bliss of lips and tongue and the weight of Galion's body on top of him save for the deeper yearning that held true pleasure at bay: his body would find no true satisfaction until they were joined. His legs rubbed against Galion's and his heels dug into the ground below and he was fleetingly aware that his burns no longer plagued him, that his flesh felt new and flawless as a babe's. He would not have been surprised to survey his body and find all of his scars vanished, but it was only Galion's body he cared to survey now. The thought of the tight heat that awaited him sent a bolt radiating outward from his bollocks, tense in anticipation of their fetching.

"Oil," he whispered. "There is some in my pouch. It is not your yarrow salve, but it will suffice."

Galion chuckled sardonically. "You were certain of yourself."

"Nay," a breathless grin swept his features. "Desperately hopeful."

Galion reached without relinquishing Haldir's hand, but it was his own pouch he grabbed, rummaging for a moment before pulling out a small pot of yarrow salve. He acknowledged Haldir's groan with a dark grin of his own.

"And I leave nothing to chance where you are concerned."

His slicked hand brought a needful pang to the erection spearing up between Haldir's legs. But his fingers did not linger there. They drifted over the straining orbs that lay below, and slipped into the dark crevasse behind. Haldir made a noise of surprise and Galion's grey eyes locked on his, glassy and luminous as stars.

"You are mine now, Haldir Guilinion. There is no part of you I will allow you to withhold. I would have your body as well as your soul."

The shiver that took him at those words, at that shadowy and strangely potent shade coloring Galion's familiar voice, started between his shoulder blades and tumbled down his spine. Haldir did not fear the act—he had lain under lovers in his youth and taken pleasure in being thus used. It had been soldierly pride that stayed him from that role in later years and made him exalt in his primacy. But he had never felt the need for such dominion with Galion. Nay, it had not been pride that had stayed him in the healer's bed, but rather the disconcerting knowledge that in surrendering to Galion, he would be forced to own the full measure of his love. Submission would have been acknowledgement that the healer was his weakness.

But he knew now—had learned nearly too late- that Galion was not his weakness, but his strength; there was no more need to run from what his heart most desired.

"Yes," he whispered, tightening his grip on Galion's hand, and then said nothing more. For there were no words, no words for this perfection, no words for finding himself for the first time in all his long years well and truly cherished, well and truly whole. In that instant, Haldir wanted nothing more than to be owned, to be claimed, to be loved.

The healer's fingers moved inside him with tender persistence, coaxing him open, and he could not be sure if the spreading warmth he felt within was his body's own rapture, or the secret heat of the healer's innate gift to succor with his hands. He drew up his knees, offering every inch of himself. Galion was so exquisite to behold, the moon caught in his skin and glowing pale, the sinews of his chest and arms flexing, virile strength subdued behind his gentle touch. The inky fall of his unbound tresses cloaked him in shifting shadows. He was single-minded in his preparation, suppressing his yearning that Haldir's pleasure might be as fulsome as his own.

When at last Galion breached him, the burn was nothing compared to the wonder of it, the concomitant swirl of power and vulnerability, the strange and beautiful knowledge that his most faithful and beloved was inside him, was within his blood and soul as well as within the tight clench of his body, and the thought of it was enough to make him keen. He watched through heavy-lidded eyes as Galion rode him, life straining beneath his skin, too much for one body to hold.

Haldir pulled his hand from Galion's grasp, for their blood had long since mingled, and they were now joined in an embrace far more intimate than the clasp of hands. He cinched his darkling mate in his arms and drew him down, drew him close, begged kisses from him with his mouth open and tongue questing. The sensation of radiant weightlessness flowed between them, love and pleasure now one and the same and more intense than anything either of them could have imagined. Galion pushed deep, sank to the root in Haldir's heat, but he moved slowly, in spite of his ravening need to possess. His thrusts held a rhythm of languor, as if they had all the time in the world to dwell in this ensorcelled realm. Haldir's legs locked around his hips as if he feared the loss of him. Something profound ached inside that demanded Galion's presence within him, some feral part of him was desperately satisfied by the feeling of being spread wide and speared, the feeling of unimaginable fullness and surrender. He was a willing thrall to Galion's exquisite hunger.

His shaft was trapped between their bellies, tormented by the slow drag of sweat-slicked skin. And suddenly, it was all too much: the friction, the delving heat that slowly pierced him, the kisses now as necessary as breathing…his skin tingled, every inch of it, his vision had gone white at the edges, as if the brilliance of this act would blind him. His breath burned in his lungs and Galion's weight pressed him into the ground. The cords in Galion's neck stood out against the strain of his measured thrusts, the effort of holding himself in check even as his release threatened to shatter them both.

"Oh…_please_," Haldir begged, and the word came out of him again and again, a visceral supplication. He could not articulate his need, only knowing as he knew his claiming, his joy, his body being pushed to the peak of desire, that Galion alone could give him what he required. Galion was moving faster now, hunger at last conquering patience. As the healer's hips pumped in the ecstasy of the rut, each could feel the other's waxing bliss as hotly as their own and the revelation of pleasure given as well as received magnified every sensation. And then someone was crying out, it did not matter who, and Galion was spilling himself deep inside Haldir, filling him with the warm flood of his seed, his face twisted in utmost bliss. Haldir's body was rhythmically shuddering and his own release was spurting hot between them, stippling their chests.

When at last the tremors subsided, Galion collapsed atop Haldir, who held him close, refusing to relinquish him. The din of roaring blood had subsided, and only the laughing brook and the songs of the night birds broke the placid silence. No words passed between them, but their hands were eloquent enough, smoothing paths down the curve of a back, tracing the plains of faces familiar and beloved, drawing each other into close and closer embraces as they roused each other and coupled again with no less hunger than before.

They loved each other into exhaustion. The first golden striations of dawn had appeared when they had finally spent the last of their ardor and drew their cloaks over them to stave off the early chill. Haldir curled himself against the healer's side, pillowing his head on Galion's chest, listening to the comforting cadence of his lover's heartbeat echoing his own. Galion's face was half buried in his hair, and he seemed at peace breathing in the familiar scent of it. But at long last, a pang of misery assailed Haldir, regret for the needless pain he had caused, for time wasted, for his thoughtless and destructive denial.

"Oh, Galion…curse me for a fool," he whispered, his voice thick.

Galion twined his fingers tighter in Haldir's hair, smiled mildly into the unruly blonde crown. "I often have."

"I should have claimed you for my own when I first knew your heart."

But Galion would hear no recriminations in the wake of their lovemaking. Nothing save death could part them now, and seasons of his waiting fell away before the promise of unnumbered years stretching before them. "Sleep now," Galion murmured, his own body suddenly suffused with torpor. "You have an eternity to recompense me."

* * *

Scant hours later, Galion woke alone in the snug nest of cloaks they had fashioned in the night. Curiosity and worry piqued him, but when he quieted his mind, he became aware Haldir was near. A sense of wellbeing that was, and yet was not, his own hovered in the background of his consciousness. It was strange, this presence of another, this new clairvoyance. Strange and wonderful.

Tentatively, Galion cast out the thread of his thoughts, knowing not how, or if, Haldir would hear them.

_Where have you gone, bright one?_

Behind him, a splash of the water was the river's merry response. Haldir broke the surface of the stream, swiping the water from his eyes with one hand and grinning from ear to ear.

"I am here," he answered. He had heard.

He scrambled up the bank, water sheeting off his hair and beading on the planes of his body. Galion watched him swagger toward him with mingled adoration and reawakened desire. Haldir knelt beside him and took up one of his hands. Into his palm, he pressed a smooth, grey river stone.

"A new declaration," he offered.

"You are far from a child," Galion gently teased. "Have you still no words to speak it?"

Haldir cupped his chin and looked long into his eyes, as if the very sight of Galion's face nourished and renewed him.

"Only these," he said. "I love you."


	14. Chapter 14

**Lothlorien, Fourth Age 21**

He slipped unseen between the trees, threading through bowers and into the wilds, eschewing the orderly splendor of Galadriel's garden not merely for the pain of remembrance it brought him, but because such regimented beauty did not please so much as confound him. Deeper solace lay beneath the timeless shadows of the Golden Wood in its native form, untamed and winding. There was more of that wildness now that Galadriel was no longer here to oversee her plots, or to cajole the buds into perpetual flower.

Artanis. Nerwen. Man-maiden and Noble-woman she had been when first his gaze had lit upon her, and his heart longed for her from the first, for that strong and willful beauty. Long-legged and barefoot had she been then, as tall as he and surpassingly fair, sprinting and leaping, with her spun-gold hair bound in a heavy plait down the perfect curve of her back. She could run faster than all of them, as if Manwë's breath itself propelled her. Always in her youth a challenger waited to best her, but she merely laughed, the sound of wind in leaves, and she outran them.

Oh, how he mourned the loss of that laughter! That was what had stolen his heart: that sound like wind in leaves. Racing through the woods in Doriath, sometimes she would give him the victory, collapsing breathless to the ground, cheeks flushed with life. They would talk of lore and of love, and she would absently braid blooms or long grasses in her hair, that glimmering garland radiating the light of the Two Trees. _Galadriel_ he had named her then in a reverent whisper, his fingers tangling in golden silk, and she met his fevered gaze boldly at first, then blushed and laughed and turned away, strangely demure, taking his heart forever in the swift simplicity of that gesture.

Her laughter had become rare as a jewel, something kept locked away behind years of strife and sorrow. The loss of Nenya had been the last in a long line of devastations, though she had foreseen that it would be thus, that when the One Ring failed, the others would follow. She had been a Ringbearer for so many years, he wondered if she would ever again feel herself without that shackling weight on her finger.

She had understood why he feared her weakness, and yet he had felt the unspoken hurt, the grievous wound of his mistrust when he told her he would rather see her perish than see her enthralled, and it saddened him still to know that he had caused her that portion of grief. And yet, had she not taken Nenya against his counsel? Perhaps ultimately it was this pain, wrought out of love on either side, that made it easier for them to part for now. Aman summoned her, promised a surcease of heartache, an end to her weariness. At last the Doom of Mandos that lay upon her and all her kin was lifted, the way to the Elvenhome opened to her, though she had long despaired it would remain shut to her forever. She had been weakened beyond bearing by time, by war, by the Ring, by the ululating call of the sea that compelled her in a voice that, in the end, was stronger than his own. This, too, was hurtful, but not beyond his bearing. He hoped when next they met, he would find her whole again, find her strong and willful and laughing.

He had roots to this land deep as any oak, and they bound him here in a way in which she had never been bound. Yet while this was the land he loved, and these were trees that he tended with as much care as if they had been the children of his body, the Golden Wood was no longer beautiful without her presence; the mallorn leaves began to fall, and the warm light of perpetual spring began to fail. For all he had desired a Lorien at peace, a Lorien free from the threat of darkness, it seemed to him now that Lorien was no longer his home. He had saved the land only to leave it.

He pressed his face to the cool bark of a mallorn, silver and smooth beneath his cheek.

_Your heart has much sorrow, Silvertree. It is weary; you are weary._

Celeborn nodded, letting the slow pulse of rising sap and sinking roots succor him, the touch of the tree an armless embrace.

_You will quit us soon, will you not?_

Celeborn did not answer; there was no need. 

* * *

The torch in Haldir's hand guttered in the gloom, casting a callow beam that reflected the slime seeping down the walls. He could hear the snarl of Yrch, but could not see them; in the labyrinthine bowels of Dol Guldur, it was easy to lose one's bearings. Distantly, swords clashed and voices both black and Elven cursed and shouted.

Narrow stairs spiraled down and the torch sputtered and went out; he could discern nothing further than his next step. Putting out a hand, he found the clammy stones of the stairwell. A draft crept stealthily around him, a vindictive finger of ice tracing his veins.

In the dungeons, there were Men and Dwarves. There were Elves as well, but none whose faces were known to him; perhaps they were taken from Mirkwood. All were dead, of course. The vulgar stench told him some had been moldering there a while, but others glistened with the fresh red blood of recent murder. Dol Guldur allowed no escape, no pardon, no reprieve.

The warhorn blared and he sought an exit. The damnable tunnels curved every which way, and with no light to see by, he was helpless. The horn blared again, a final warning. He cursed. He refused to countenance such an undignified death as being crushed by malevolent masonry.

A high-pitched tone pierced the murk and the rocks beneath his feet groaned as if in complaint against the sound. A tremor followed, which rapidly rose to a quake. He felt his insides tossed in the rapid oscillation of magic and gasped at the sudden sharp pain behind his eyes, a red-hot needle boring through his skull. Behind him, he could hear Feredir heaving, the vibrations twisting his law-brother's gut. His breathing labored against the tightness of his chest, the constriction of an invisible hand.

A violent belch from deep in the earth portended the falling of the first stones, but once they began to tumble, they came in a torrent, a river of rock. He was thrown backwards in the spiraling stairwell and felt himself falling, falling.

Yet even as he plummeted backward, arms blindly flailing for purchase, he felt warmth against his back, the weight of a body molded against his, cradling him as he fell.

_Wake, Olórin-nin._ Galion's voice stirred him. _You are dreaming._

His limbs jerked violently, his eyes flashing into focus at the imagined moment of impact, anticipating agony only to find himself naked in his bed, swathed in blankets, the solid warmth of his mate's body curved behind his own. Galion's arm tightened around him, prompting him to settle, and he relaxed into the security of that clutch, blinking away the vestiges of troubled sleep. It had not been the first time dreams had taken him back to those final terrifying moments inside the black citadel before the magic of Galadriel brought it to the ground. Likely, it would not be the last.

Assured now that he was awake, Galion spoke, aloud this time, though his voice was low. "Celeborn departs today, and Taurnil with him. We promised to see them off."

Celeborn was leading a large group of Elves to Imladris, where he wished live with his grandsons for a time, and from there, many of the travelers would continue on to the Havens and take ship. Taurnil's health had but marginally improved since taking the Ungol's poison. Only in Aman, where Ungoliant had long ago fatted herself in the peaks and crags of Ered Gorgoroth, did the healers have the knowledge still to return his health, thus it was imperative that he tarry here no longer. Merilin, the healer who had so thoroughly supplanted Galion in caring for him, would travel at his side, and there was little doubt in Galion's mind that there would be betrothal bands on their fingers when he saw them again.

_If_ he saw them again. With each season that passed in this new age, it seemed more and more likely that he would not. Orophin had already begun his own preparations to quit this land, for he could bear to be kept from Alquonís and Ethuilion no longer. Rúmil, too, desired to depart, but had spoken little of his plans, for while the sea-longing held him in its briny yoke and the promise of reunion with his parents and lost friends roused his flagging spirit, there was one among them who had not yet spoken of departing. The brothers feared, as did Galion, that Haldir would neglect the call of Aman and choose to remain in Arda. It was the only home Haldir had ever known, and the shores of Valinor must have seemed to him distant, foreign, and unwelcoming.

Galion wept when he had finished his farewells, his pangs made all the sharper at the sight of Taurnil's old, sweet smile, which he feared now he would not see again. He was not alone in his tears; the departure of Celeborn was bittersweet, and with the passing of its beloved lord, the light of Lorien was further dimmed. 

* * *

**Lothlorien, Fourth Age 27**

"You must speak with him. You must make him understand!" Rúmil's voice was strident and tight in his throat. When Galion did not answer, Rúmil pressed further.

"Are you so easily resigned? Do you not wish to reunite with your own kin? He would follow you if you demanded it, so why do you hold your tongue?"

Galion wearily pinched the bridge of his nose and looked down. Rúmil knew as well as he that threats and ultimatums would gain him little with Haldir, just as his own quiet petitions had availed him not. Nor was there hope he could make Rúmil understand his brother's steadfast insistence on remaining in Middle-Earth, for he scarcely understood it himself. He knew that there was no choice for him, that Haldir's choice would be his, as well. He had cast in his lot with Haldir, though it meant a severing of his dearest ties, for Haldir would not be moved. Galion was sick with it, yet he had conjured every argument he could think of, and had each time been met with the truculent wall of Haldir's imperturbable logic. Cold comfort it was, in some manner, to have the decision taken from him, to relinquish himself to fate. And Haldir was his fate. If he was certain of anything, he was certain of that. Better to fade into shadow and memory by his beloved's side than to board the ship alone to eternal regret.

It was at that moment that the Elf in question stepped into the _talan_, stripping off his cloak and bow with brisk efficiency. One look was enough for him to guess the reason for Rúmil's visit. His expression was grave as he turned his eyes toward his brother.

"You will not turn my mind, Rumíl. I have a duty here that I am sworn to discharge. Why must you blight our final days together with your rancor?"

"It is you alone who would make these our final days together, you alone who blights us all with your recalcitrance," Rúmil cried. "Celeborn released you from your duty! You are no longer Marchwarden of Lorien, Haldir. We are soldiers no more!"

Haldir's eyes took on a steely cast. "My duty was not to Celeborn, but to the realm. All the ages I have lived, save a scant handful of years, I have lived under Lorien's shelter. I have defended her since I was old enough to wield a bow. I have seen those I love fall here. I have lead many to their deaths that the trees may stand, and I would not see their sacrifice set so easily aside."

"You would commit yourself to this lonely fate because you cannot give up your position? Out of guilt for the dead?" Rúmil shook his head in disbelief. "Lorien fades, Haldir. With every season, her light recedes. Her Lord and Lady have taken their leave; she is now just a simple forest like any other."

Haldir bristled. "Simple or no, I am tied to this land. I made an oath, and I will not be forsworn."

Rúmil spun around in search of something on which to levy his rage. He struck out with a roar, the swipe of his arm sending a bowl full of apples flying off a table. The bowl shattered and Galion winced at the sound, watching impotently as the fruit scattered over the floorboards and rolled about at their feet. Haldir feigned impassivity, though his rigid posture signaled anything but. Rúmil stepped up to him, leaving only spare inches between them.

"Do you truly wish to stand guard in an empty wood, brother? To pass beyond all memory, beyond even the reach of Mandos, for a fate you cannot change? Men will take the woods, Haldir. Our time here is ended and theirs in the bloom of youth. Their empires will spread. Beyond Gondor. Beyond Rohan. They will come to your woods, Haldir, and you will not be able to stop them. All your strength and all your skill will avail you not; they will cast you out, or they will slay you."

Haldir's nostrils flared briefly, the only outward sign that Rúmil's speech dismayed him.

"To what end would you stay? That you might fade with the land only to have all that you guarded against come to pass regardless?"

When Haldir stiffened defensively, Rúmil changed his tack one last time.

"Do you not remember another oath you made? What were those words, Haldir, those words you took from Father? _I will return to you, young ones, because I do not part from you willingly_. Would you have us sundered, brother? Do you part willingly from us now?"

When Haldir did not answer, Rúmil's head drooped in defeat. When he spoke again, it was in a haunted whisper.

"A plague upon your pride. Three days, Haldir. We leave in three days." 

* * *

When the sun rose on the third day, Haldir was so sick with grief he could hardly speak. The three sons of Guilin parted with tears bitterer than gall, barely able to summon the words of parting from their clutching throats. Feredir stood at distance, his jaw stonily set, furious with Haldir and aching for Rúmil.

"Know that you go with my love," Haldir whispered tightly, and after laying a trembling kiss on two shuddering brows, he strode away, his back painfully straight, and vanished into the woods. Even after the trio mounted and Rúmil spurred his horse, hasty to put leagues quickly between him and his wayward brother, Galion did not venture out to find him; he would not want to be found. His heart and mind were shuttered even to the healer's compassionate touch.

Day gave way to night and still Haldir wandered racked and alone, alternately racing and stumbling through the hidden paths that only he now remembered. He sought to expiate his guilt and regret through sheer exertion, running until his lungs burned and his legs buckled beneath him. He ran till he thought he would retch, as if in purging his body he could purge his heart.

He believed so firmly that he had done what was right, what was honorable, but had not every decision he had made in the name of duty rendered him desolate? The road of righteousness was steep and cruel; why did his loyalty ever set him in opposition of what he desired?

Around him, he watched the leaves, golden now, and russet-brown, carried on unseen currents from their lofty holds down to the ground. There would be no shelter from winter's cold and snows this year; with the Lady gone, the frosts would return with a vengeance, as if to extract a penalty from the land for all the ages it had existed in suspended spring.

Even the mellyrn shed their leaves, a sight rarely seen even by him. It was as if he were privy to their death now, the inexorable decline of majesty into dust. So much of the landscape had changed, metamorphosed by fire, that it already felt less like home and more like a land lost forever. The preternatural budding had ended and leaf-fall had arrived; Lorien, which had long been an idyllic sanctuary held aloft in time, forever looking backward toward a golden past, was now but an ancient forest, just as Rúmil had threatened.

At the end of his weary sojourn, he emerged in the glade where he and his friends and brothers had of old communed, rowdy with drink and song, and where once he and Rúmil had fought bitterly, drawing steel against each other for the only time in all their years. Only in their final confrontation had Rúmil been as wroth with him as he had been on that day. Then Rúmil's ire had been stoked by the dispatching of their mother over the sea, and now it had come to broil because Haldir would not travel the straight road himself. A grim jest it seemed to him indeed. The stately mallorn here beckoned him with its mighty roots, and he sank between them, the very spot he had sought so many times before, warming himself in the embrace of an ancient friend.

_I will not abandon you_, he told the tree, running his hand lovingly over the roots that rose up around him.

The tree offered no answer.

_Wherefore your silence, Pen-Iaur?_

Still the tree said nothing.

_Have I offended you, old friend? Why will you not answer me?_

No response came. Haldir laid his cheek against the roots and began to weep. The mallorn's leaves drifted down from the branches and fell upon his prone body like tears.

It was there in the darkness that Galion found him, drawn to his mate by the unvoiced despair that tugged at his soul like a moon-tide pulling at a ship. He threw his arms around the prostrated Elf and held him tight, feeling Haldir's sobs rattle his own bones.

"The leaves used to fall only by the Lady's hand," Haldir said in a small voice.

"The Lady is gone," Galion reminded him gently, knowing the words cruel.

When Haldir raised his head, his face was stricken. The toll of all his years was visible now in his features; ancient they were and horribly weary, though his eyes, red-rimmed and glassy, glinted with all the stark misery of a lost child. His hands shook in Galion's clutches, and that tremor, more than anything else, frightened Galion.

"They no longer speak to me. They have cast me out."

He sagged against the healer as if in voicing those words the weight of his realization crushed him, bore him roughly into the only haven left to him. Galion's arms enfolded him, warming the straining back with a loving touch.

"Nay, Haldir," he whispered, his breath caressing the foliate curve of his beloved's ear. He dared not place his words in Haldir's mind lest the voice he could hear too viscerally remind him of the voices that had gone silent. "They have not cast you out. They have released you."

Haldir's eyes focused desperately on his, seeking any sort of reassurance, any grounding force, for he had suddenly been cut free from his tethers, the earth no longer solid beneath his feet.

"I have no home," he murmured.

"Your home is with me," Galion told him, his tone quiet but unyielding. His healer's hands soothed the chafing salt of tears on Haldir's cheek. "And where you are, that is my home also, wherever it may be." Galion shook him to shock him from his brutal reverie. "The choice is yours, Haldir; stay or go. Whatever you decide, I will accept, but this I must ask you: seek the answer in your heart, not in your pride." He lifted Haldir's unsteady hand and pressed it to his cheek. "You heart brought you to me. Do not tell me it does not give fair counsel."

A mild breeze swirled up around them and shuddered through the branches in affirmation, but Haldir only slumped boneless against Galion, too stunned with sorrow to respond. 

* * *

The startled mare tossed her head and broke into staccato steps at the crescendo of hoofbeats behind her. Feredir soothed her with low words and gentle petting until she quieted. By that time, the thundering gallop had shifted to an eager canter.

Feredir cast a look of practiced dispassion behind him, confident that the approaching riders would not see the veiled hope in his eyes as he sought confirmation of their identities, or the relief that glowed there when he gained it. He swiveled his head and beheld Rúmil and Orophin riding a few furlongs ahead, their heads bent toward each other in silent commiseration, two parts of a trio mourning their absent third.

When he turned back again, the riders had slowed to a trot and were pulling up behind him, breathless, their faces flushed from exertion and the wind. He tried, and failed, to school galling fondness from his features.

"I suppose I should not be surprised that even now you insist on making a grand entrance."

There were tears overspilling Haldir's eyes when he shot back a scapegrace grin, full of contrition and gratitude, and shrugged.

"I did not wish to disappoint you."


	15. Chapter 15

**Epilogue: Aman, Fourth Age 29**

Galion rolled over in his sleep, but upon finding the sheets beside him cool and smooth and bereft of the expected warmth and solidity of his mate's body he roused himself, rubbing the silt from eyes which focused now on Haldir, standing lost to contemplation across the room. Mellow rays streamed through the window carried on ribbons of mist, honeyed emissaries of a new morning. Though he had no need of rising, Haldir stood by and watched the first stirrings of the day, unaware that he himself was observed. Idly, one hand moved at his side, tentatively touching the deep bruise on his ribs, a reminder of yesterday's loss to Feredir in the practice salle. Galion had refused to heal it, deeming it a fit penalty for their rough play. He had not bothered to dress himself, and the early light danced over his skin so becomingly that Galion wondered if perhaps Haldir was a child of those golden rays, a creature born of light rather than of flesh. His gaze roved up the long, strong legs, over the deliciously muscular rump with its twinned dimples sitting astride the tailbone, to the graceful curve of his spine crowned in rumpled flax. Even the bruise, a mottled purple prize won through the restlessness of warrior blood seeking peacetime occupation, was enchanting.

Yet he could feel Haldir's pensiveness, and it concerned him. He slid his legs free from the knot of blankets, stretching as he rose, and moved to stand behind Haldir at the window. He leaned to rest his chin on Haldir's shoulders, lacing his arms around him, his bed-warm skin drawing the chill from Haldir's back. A shiver coursed through him when Galion spoke.

"Your thoughts have sent you far away this morning," he said gently, nuzzling Haldir's neck.

Haldir expelled his breath in a drawn-out sigh, taking solace from those whip-strong arms around his body. "Not so far as you might imagine." He smiled wanly and continued. "I was only thinking that when I was young, I lived in my father's shadow. I was Guilin's son. Everything I did or failed to do reflected on him, so I strove to be the best son I could be. I grew. I was known as Elemmakil's protégé and I struggled to prove my own worth, to show I had attained my rank through my own skill. At last, I became the Marchwarden of Lorien, the last to own that title. And now…"

His voice trailed off, and he turned his face back to the window.

"And now?" Galion prompted.

"And now, I have no title, no duty. I am merely Haldir."

Galion tightened his grip around Haldir's waist, and feeling himself so sublimely girded in those arms Haldir pressed back into their sustaining presence.

"Nothing of you is mere," Galion told him plainly. "You are Haldir, beloved of Galion. Is that not duty enough?"

Haldir grinned a small grin and turned in the embrace, grasping Galion's wrists and attempting to wrestle them behind the healer's back. "'Tis a terrible burden," he teased, and Galion pulled a wry face as he broke Haldir's grip and shoved him playfully against the wall, forcing the air from his lungs with an audible huff. "Indeed," Haldir laughed as he sought to regain his breath, "I verily struggle under the weight of it!"

His eyes narrowed slightly, though they still held that languid gentleness that was rare as a winter flower and thus much endeared to the healer. That gentleness spoke of his complete comfort, declared that he was no longer on his guard but open and at peace, and despite his early morning contemplations, he was happy. Happier than he ever imagined he could be. But behind that indolent expression of beryl-stone blue, something deeper lurked. Galion knew the look, that slight quirk of the lips, the smug rising of a single brow, and the passion its subtlety belied. Its effect on him was instantaneous and intense.

He disengaged from Haldir and stepped backward toward the bed, countering Haldir's enkindling gaze with his own beckoning smolder and held out his hand.

"Come back to bed, 'merely' Haldir. Your duty calls."

* * *

**Postscript, Seventh Age 2006 **

The Elves have all passed into the West, or faded out of time and mind, but the forest remains. The trees are silent, as they have been for uncounted years, and yet there is a presence to this place, this primeval weald. From time to time, men wander here, fancifully imagining the possibilities inherent in this acreage, envisioning what they might build here if the old wood came down. From time to time men wander here, but in the end, they all depart, and quickly at that, overcome by the inexplicable feeling that they have trespassed, that this place is not for them. The trees remain untouched, save for the slow caress of years.

Mortal memory is fleeting and faulty, just as mortal lives are short and fraught. There are few who have heard of this place, fewer still who know the stories of those who lived here long ago, and none, none at all, who remember the realm of Amdir and of Amroth, of Celeborn, and of Galadriel. The Galadhrim have been relegated to legend and lore, and in the simple span of a few more mortal generations, they will be forgotten altogether.

But the memory of the trees lives still, and it reaches back, deep and fertile as roots in the soil. The trees remember their fallen kings, their lord and lady. They whisper still, in voices we cannot hear, of Guilin, and of Elemmakil, and of Tathalion. The trees remember Haldir of Lorien, the last of the Marchwardens. They sing of all those who loved and tended them, and of all those who walked the ragged diagonal between duty and desire.

The trees remember.


End file.
